Some people, in their narrow and altogether superficial view of
Christianity, would divide between the two, and say forgiveness comes
from God's love, and scourging comes from His holiness. But this psalm
puts the two together, just as we must put together as inseparable from
each other the two conceptions of holiness and of love. Now our modern
notions of what is meant by the love of God are a great deal too
sentimental and gushing and limp. Love is degraded unless there be
holiness in it. It becomes immoral good nature, much more than anything
that deserves the name of love. A God who is all love, so much so that
it makes no difference to Him whether a man is a saint or a sinner, is
not a God to be worshipped, and scarcely a God to be admired. He is
lower than we, not higher. But His holy love is like a sea of glass
mingled with fire; the love being shot all through, as it were, with
streams of flame.
This holy love underlies the forgiveness of sins. To forgive may
sometimes be profoundly right; it may sometimes be profoundly immoral. A
general gaol delivery simply sets the scoundrels free; a universal
amnesty is a failure of justice, and a very doubtful benefit. But the
forgiveness, which is the issue of holy love, is a means to an end, and
the end which it has in view is that, drawn by answering love to a
pardoning God, we may be drawn from the sins which alienate us from Him.
There is no such sure way of making a man forsake his sins as to give
him the assurance that God has forgiven them. 'Thou shalt be ashamed and
confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy sins,
when'--I smite? no--'I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast
done.' 'Thou wast a God that forgavest them,' and in the very act of
forgiving, didst draw them from their sins.
That holy love, in like manner, underlies retribution. I have been
speaking of retribution mainly as it is seen in the working of natural
law. It is none the less God's act, because it is the operation of the
laws which He impressed upon His creation at the beginning. You have
weaving machines in your mills that whenever a thread breaks, stop dead.
Is it the machine or the maker that is to get the credit of that? God
has set us in an order of things wherein, and has given us a nature
whereby, automatically, every sin, as it were, stops the loom, and
'every transgression and disobedience receives its just recompense of
reward.' But men sometimes say 'that is Nature; that is not God.' God
lies at the back of Nature, and works through Nature. Although Nature is
not God, God is Nature. Therefore it is 'Thou' that 'takest vengeance of
their inventions.' Let us, then, remember that retribution is a token of
love, meant to drive us from our sins, just as forgiveness is meant to
draw us from them. Our Psalmist had come the length of putting these two
things together, forgiveness and retribution. We have reached further,
and here is the New Testament enlargement and deepening and explanation
of the Old Testament thought: 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins,' and in the very act, 'to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.' 'If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.'