'I will cleanse ... I will pardon.'
If sin combines in itself all these characteristics that I have touched
upon, then clearly there is guilt, and clearly there are stains; and
the gracious promise of this text deals with both the one and the other.
'I will pardon.' What is pardon? Do not limit it to the analogy of a
criminal court. When the law of the land pardons, or rather when the
administrator of the law pardons, that simply means that the penalty is
suspended. But is that forgiveness? Certainly it is only a part of it,
even if it is a part. What do you fathers and mothers do when you
forgive your child? You may use the rod or you may not, that is a
question of what is best for the child. Forgiveness does not lie in
letting him off the punishment; but forgiveness lies in the flowing to
the child, uninterrupted, of the love of the parent heart, and that is
God's forgiveness. Penalties, some of them, remain--thank God for it!
'Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of
their inventions,' and the chastisement was part of the sign of the
forgiveness. The great penalty of all, which is separation from God, is
taken away; but the essence of that pardon, which it is my blessed work
to proclaim to all men, is, that in spite of the prodigal's rags and
the stench of the sty, the Father's love is round about him. It is
round about you, brother.
Do you need pardon? Do you not? What does conscience say? What does the
sense of remorse that sometimes blesses you, though it tortures, say?
There are tendencies in this generation, as always, but very strong at
present, to ignore the fact that all sin must necessarily lead to
tremendous consequences of misery. It does so in this world, more or
less. A man goes into another world as he left this one, and you and I
believe that 'after death is the judgment.' Do you not require pardon?
And how are you to get it? 'Himself bore our sins in His own body on
the tree.' Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died that the loving
forgiveness of God might find its way to every heart, and might take
all men to its bosom, whilst yet the righteousness of God remained
untarnished. I know not any gospel that goes deep enough to touch the
real sore place in human nature, except the gospel that says to you and
me and all of us, 'Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of
the world.'
But forgiveness is not enough, for the worst results of past sin are
the habits of sin which it leaves within us; so that we all need
cleansing. Can we cleanse ourselves? Let experience answer. Did you
ever try to cure yourself of some little trick of gesture, or manner,
or speech? And did you not find out then how strong the trivial habit
was? You never know the force of a current till you try to row against
it. 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin?' No; but God can change it for
him. So, again, we say that Jesus Christ who died for 'the remission of
sins that are past,' lives that He may give to each of us His own
blessed life and power, and so draw us from our evil, and invest us in
His good. Dear brother, I beseech you to look in the face the fact of
your rebellion, of your missing your aim, of your perverted life, and
to ask yourself the question, 'Can I deal either with the guilt of the
past, or with the imperative tendency to repeated sin in the future?'
You may have your leprous flesh made 'like the flesh of a little
child.' You may have your stained robe washed and made lustrous 'white
in the blood of the Lamb.' Pardon and cleansing are our two deepest
needs. There is one hand from which we can receive them both, and one
only. There is one condition on which we shall receive them, which is
that we trust in Him, 'Who was crucified for our offences, and lives to
hallow us into His own likeness.'