'_As_ we forgive.' Is, then, our poor forgiveness the measure or
condition of God's? At first sight that addition seems to impose a limit
on His pardon which might well plunge us into despair. But reflection on
the words brings to light more comforting, though solemnly warning,
thoughts.
We learn that our human forgiveness is the faint reflection of the light
of His. We have a right to infer His gentleness, forbearance, and
forgiveness from the existence of such gracious qualities in ourselves.
God is all that is good in men. 'Whatsoever things are reverend,
whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are lovely--all
these are in Him, and all as they are seen in men are from Him. 'He that
formed the eye, shall not He see?' We forgive, and will not He?
In a very real sense our forgiving is the condition of our being
forgiven. We are accustomed to hear that faith and repentance are
conditions of receiving the divine forgiveness. But the very same
disposition which, when directed to God, produces faith and repentance,
when directed to men, produces a forgiving temper. A deep sense of my
own unworthiness, and of having no ground of right to stand on, will
surely lead me to be lenient and placable to others. We cannot cut our
lives into halves, and be inwardly filled with contrition, and outwardly
full of assertion of our rights. We cannot plead with God to do for us
what we will not do for others. Our prayer for forgiveness must, if it
is real, influence our whole behaviour; and if it is not real, it will
not be answered.
The possession of God's forgiveness will make us forgiving. 'Forgiving
one another, even as also God in Christ hath forgiven you. Be ye
therefore imitators of God, as beloved children.'
Our continuous possession and conscious enjoyment of God's forgiveness
will be contingent on our forgivingness. He who took his fellow-servant
by the throat and half choked him in his determination to exact the last
farthing of his debt was, by the act, cancelling his own discharge and
piling up a mountain of debt, against himself. Our consciousness of
forgiveness will be most clear and satisfying when we are forgiving
those who trespass against us. We shall pardon most spontaneously and
fully when our hearts are warm with the beams of God's pardon.
'LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION'
'And lead us not into temptation.'--MATT. vi. 13.
The petition of the previous clause has to do with the past, this with
the future; the one is the confession of sin, the other the supplication
which comes from the consciousness of weakness. The best man needs both.
Forgiveness does not break the bonds of evil by which we are held. But
forgiveness increases our consciousness of weakness, and in the new
desire which comes from it to walk in holiness, we are first rightly
aware of the strength and frequency of inducements to sin. A man may by
mere natural conscience know something of what temptation is, but only
he understands its strength who resists it.
The sense of forgiveness and the new desires and love thereby developed,
lead to the falling of the mask from the deceitful forms that gleam
around us. He who is forgiven has his eyesight purged, and can see that
these are not what they seem, but demons that lure us to our
destruction. It is true that the sign of the Cross compels the foul
thing to appear in its own true form. 'Then started up in his own shape
the fiend.' The love which comes from forgiveness and the new sympathies
which it engenders are the Ithuriel's spear. What a wonderful change
passes upon the siren tempters when we believe that Christ has pardoned
us, and have learned to love Him! Then the fishtail is seen below the
sunlit waters.
Forgiveness is one of the chief means of teaching us our sin. The
removal of all dread of personal consequences, which it effects, leaves
us free to contemplate with calmed hearts the moral character of our
actions. The revelation of God's love which is made in forgiveness
quickens our consciences as well as purges them, and our standard of
purity is raised. The effort to live rightly, which is the sure result
of God's love believed, first teaches us thoroughly how wrong we are. We
know the strength of the current when we try to pull against it.
Looking to God as our Father, our blackness shows blacker against the
radiant purity of His white light.
Forgiveness does not at once and wholly annihilate the tendency to
transgress. True, the belief that God has forgiven supplies the
strongest motives for holiness, and the new life which comes to every
man who so believes will by degrees conquer all the lingering garrisons
of the Philistines which hold scattered strong-posts in the land. But
though this be so, still the purifying process is a slow and gradual
one, and evil may be forced out of the heart while yet it is in the
blood. The central will may be cleansed while yet habits continue to be
strong, and the power of resistance, new-born as it is, may be weak in
act though omnipotent in nature. All sin leaves some tendency to
recurrence. The path which one avalanche has hollowed lies ready for
another. It is true, on the one side, that no purity is so bright and no
obedience so steadfast as that of the man who has been cleansed and
reclaimed from rebellion. But it is also true that, on the road to that
ultimate purity, a pardoned man has to struggle daily with the bitter
relics of his old self, to wage war against evils the force of which he
never knew till he tried to resist them, against sins which were all
sleek, and velvety, and purring, as long as he fondled and stroked them,
but which flash out sharp claws when he would fling them from their dens
in his heart. Forgiveness does not at once conquer sin, and forgiveness
leads to deeper consciousness of sin. Hence the order of petitions here.
Following on the prayer for pardon, comes that for shelter from and in
temptation which arises from deep consciousness of our own weakness and
liability to fall.
Temptation has two parts in it--the circumstances which lead to sin, the
desire which is addressed by them. There must be tinder as well as
spark, if there is to be flame. Fire falling on water or upon bare rock
will kindle nothing. God sends the one, we make the other.