Look at the instances in our psalm, 'Moses and Aaron among His
priests.... They called upon the Lord and He answered them. Thou wast a
God that forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance of their doings.'
Moses dies on Pisgah, Aaron is stripped of his priestly robes by his
brother's hand and left alone amongst the clouds and the eagles, on the
solitary summit of the mountain, and yet Moses and Aaron knew themselves
forgiven the sins for which they died those lonely deaths. And these are
but instances of what is universally true, that the sin which is
pardoned is also 'avenged' in the sense of having retribution dealt out
to it.
I need not dwell upon this at any length, but let me just remind you how
there are two provinces of human experience in which this is abundantly
true: one, that of outward consequences, and another that of inward
consequences. Take, for instance, two men, boon companions, who together
have wasted their substance in riotous living. One of them is converted,
as we call it, becomes a Christian, knows himself forgiven. The other
one is not. Is the one less certain to have a corrugated liver than the
other? Will the disease, the pauperism, the ruined position in life, the
loss of reputation be any different in the cases of him who is pardoned
and of him who is not? No; the two will suffer in a similar fashion, and
the different attitude that the one has to the divine love from that
which the other has, will not make a hair of difference as to the
results that follow. The consequences are none the less divine
retribution because they are the result of natural laws, and none the
less penal because they are automatically inflicted.
There is another department in which we see the same law working, and
that is the inward consequences. A man does change his attitude to his
former sins, when he knows that he is pardoned; but the results of these
sins will follow all the same, whether he is forgiven or not. Memory
will be tarnished, habits will be formed and chain a man, capacities
will be forfeited, weaknesses will ensue. The wounds may be healed, but
the scars will remain, and when we consider how certainly, and as I
said, divinely, such issues dog all manner of transgression, we can
understand what the Psalmist meant when, not thinking about a future
retribution, but about the present life's experiences, he said, 'Thou
wast a God that forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance of their
inventions.' 'The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold,
therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing,' and that will be
his case whether he is forgiven, or not forgiven, by the divine love.
So, dear friends! do not let us confound the two things which are so
widely separated, the flow of the divine love to us irrespective of our
sins, which is the true forgiveness, and the remission of the penalty,
the infliction of which may itself be a part of forgiveness. 'Whatsoever
a man soweth that shall he also reap,' and he will reap it whether he
has sown darnel and tares and poisonous seeds, of which he is now
ashamed, and for which he has received forgiveness, or whether he has
not asked nor received it.
Only remember that if we humbly realise the great fact that God has
forgiven us, we can, as they say, 'take our punishment' in an altogether
different spirit and temper, and it comes to be, not judicial penalty,
but paternal chastisement, the token of love, and of which we can say
that 'We are judged of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with
the world.'