We often ask for forgiveness; have we any definite notion of what we are
asking for? When we forgive one another, he who forgives puts away
alienation of heart, every cloud of suspicion from his mind, and his
feeling and his conduct are as if there had never been a jar or an
offence, or are more tender and loving because of the offence that is
now forgiven. He who is forgiven has, on his part, a deeper shame for
the offence, which looks far darker now, when it is blotted out, than it
did before forgiveness. Both are eager to show love, not in order to
erase the past, but because the past is erased.
When a father forgives his child, does that merely or chiefly mean that
he spares the rod; or does it not much rather mean that he lets his love
flow out to the little culprit, undammed back by the child's fault? And
when God forgives He does so, not so much as a judge but rather as the
Father. It is the father's heart that the child craves when it cries for
pardon. The remission of punishment is an element, but by no means the
chief element, in man's forgiveness, and that is still more true as to
God's. There are present, and for the most part outward, consequences of
a forgiven man's sin which are not averted by forgiveness, and which it
is for his good that he should not escape. But when the assurance of
God's unhindered love rests on a pardoned soul, those consequences of
its sins which it has to reap cease to be penal and become educative,
cease to be the expressions only of God's hatred of evil, and become
expressions of His love to the forgiven evil-doer. 'I will be his
Father, and he shall be My son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten
him with the rod of men ... but My mercy shall not depart from him.'