I suppose that is almost exclusively a thought due to the historical
revelation, through the ages, to Israel, crowned, as well as deepened,
by the culmination and perfecting of the eternal revelation of God in
Jesus Christ our Lord. I suppose the conception of a forgiving God is
the product of the Old and of the New Testament. But familiar as the
word is to us, and although the thing that it means is embodied in the
creed of Christendom, 'I believe ... in the forgiveness of sins,' I
think that a great many of us would be somewhat put to it, if we were
called upon to tell definitely and clearly what we mean when we speak of
the forgiveness of sins. Many of us, prior to thinking about the matter,
would answer 'the non-infliction or remission of penalty.' And I am far
from denying that that is an element in forgiveness, although it is the
lowest and the most external, in both the Old Testament and the New
Testament conception of it. But we must rise a great deal higher than
that. We are entitled, by our Lord's teaching, to parallel God's
forgiveness and man's forgiveness; and so perhaps the best way to
understand the perfect type of forgiveness is to look at the imperfect
types which we see round us. What, then, do we mean by human
forgiveness? It is seen in multitudes of cases where there is no
question at all of penalty. Two men get alienated from one another. One
of them does something which the other thinks is a sin against
friendship or loyalty, and he who is sinned against says, 'I forgive
you.' That does not mean that he does not inflict a penalty, because
there is no penalty in question. Forgiveness is not a matter of conduct,
then, primarily, but it is a matter of disposition, of attitude, or, to
put it into a shorter word, it is a matter of the heart; and even on the
lower level of the human type, we see that remission of penalty may be a
part, sometimes is and sometimes is not, but is always the smallest part
of it, and a derivative and secondary result of something that went
before. An unconscious recognition of this attitude of mind and heart,
as being the essential thing in forgiveness, brings about an instance of
the process by which two words that originally mean substantially the
same thing come to acquire each its special shade of meaning. What I
refer to is this--when a judicial sentence on a criminal is remitted, we
never hear any one speak about the criminal being 'forgiven.' We keep
the word 'pardon,' in our daily conventional intercourse, for slight
offences or for the judicial remission of a sentence. The king pardons a
criminal; you never hear about the king 'forgiving' a criminal. And
that, as I take it, is just because people have been groping after the
thought that I am trying to bring out, viz. that the remission of
penalty is one thing, and purging the heart of all alienation and hatred
is another; and that the latter is forgiveness, whilst the former has to
be content with being pardon.
The highest type of forgiveness is the paternal. Every one of us who
remembers our childhood, and every one of us who has had children of his
own, knows what paternal forgiveness is. It is not when you put away the
rod that the little face brightens again and the tears cease to flow,
but it is when _your_ face clears, and the child knows that there is no
cloud between it and the father, or still more the mother, that
forgiveness is realised. The immediate effect of our transgressions is
that we, as it were, thereby drop a great, black rock into the stream of
the divine love, and the channel is barred by our action; and God's
forgiveness is when, as was the case in another fashion in the Deluge,
the floods rise above the tops of the highest hills; and as the good old
hymn that has gone out of fashion nowadays, says, over sins:
'Like the mountains for their size,
The seas of sovereign grace arise.'
When the love of God flows over the black rock, as the incoming tide
does over some jagged reef, then, and not merely when the rod is put on
the shelf, is forgiveness bestowed and received.
But, as I have said, the remission of penalty _is_ an element in
forgiveness. Some people say: 'It is a very dangerous thing, in the
interests of Christian truth, to treat that relation of a loving Father
as if it expressed all that God is to men.' Quite so; God is King as
well as Father. There are analogies, both in paternal and regal
government, which help us to understand the divine dealings with us;
though, of course, in regard to both we must always remember that the
analogies are remote and not to be pressed too far. But even in
recognising the fact that an integral part of forgiveness is remission
of penalty, we come back, by another path, to the same point, that the
essence of forgiveness is the uninterrupted flow of love. Remission of
penalty;--yes, by all means. But then the question comes, what _is_ the
penalty of sin? And I suppose that the deepest answer to that is,
separation from God. But if the true New Testament conception of the
penalty of sin is the eternal death which is the result of the rending
of a man away from the Source of life, then the remission of the penalty
is precisely identical with the uninterrupted flow of the divine love.
The mists of autumnal mornings drape the sky in gloom, and turn the
blessed sun itself into a lurid ball of fire. Sweep away the mists, and
its rays again pour out beneficence. The man who sins, piles up, as it
were, a cloud-bank between himself and God, and forgiveness, which is
the remission of the penalty, is the sweeping away of the cloud-bank,
and the pouring out of sunshine upon a darkened heart. So, brethren! the
essence of forgiveness is that God shall love me all the same, though I
sin against Him.