by HORATIUS BONAR
could not trust himself with this and could not believe that God would trust him with it. He has no idea of barriers against sin save in the shape of walls and chains and bars of iron, of torture and threats and wrath. On these alone he relies. He is slow to learn that all legal deterrents are in their very nature irritants with no power to produce or enforce anything hut a con strained externalism. The interpo sition of forgiving love in absolute completeness and freeness is resisted as an encouragement to evil-doing, and at the most grace, only in a very confidential and restricted form, is allowed to come into play. The dynamics of grace have never been reduced to a formula, they are supposed incapable of being so set down. That God should act in any other character than as the re warder of the deserving and the punisher of the undeserving, that He should go down into the depths of a human heart and there touch springs which were reckoned inac cessible or perilous to deal with, that His gospel should throw itself upon something nobler than man’s fear of wrath and begin by pro claiming pardon as the first step to holiness, this is so incredible to man that even with the Bible and the cross before his eyes, he turns away from it as foolishness. Nevertheless, this is “ the more excellent way” ; nay, the true and only method of getting rid of sin. Forgiveness of sins, in believing God’s t e s t im o n y to the finished p r o p i t i a t i o n of the cross is not simply indispensable to a holy life in the way of removing terror and liberating the soul from the pressure of guilt, but of imparting an im
pulse and a motive and a power which nothing else could do. For giveness at the end or in the mid dle; a partial forgiveness, or an un certain forgiveness, or a grudging forgiveness would be of no avail; it would only tantalize and mock but a complete forgiveness presented in such a way as to carry its own cer tainty along with it to everyone who will take it at the hands of God — this is a power in the earth, a power against self, a power against sin, n power over the flesh, a power for holiness such as no amount of suspense or terror could create. It is to this that our Lord refers once and again when dealing with the Pharisees, those representatives of a human standard of goodness as contrasted with a divine. How deep the significance of such statements as- these: “And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both . . .” (Luke 7:42); “ . . . Her sins, which are many, are for given . . .” (Luke 7:47); “Then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt” (Matt. 18:27); “ . . . Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11); “ I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent ance” (Luke 5:32); “ For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10); “ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son . . .” (John 3:16); “ . . . I came not to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47). It is to this also that the apostles so often refer in their discourses and epistles: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto
righteousness . . . ” (1 Pet. 2:24); “ . . . through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins” (Acts 13:38); “ But God commend- eth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5: 8); “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us .. .” (1 John 4:10); “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). To this also all the prophets had given wit ness thus: “ . . . I will pardon all their iniquities . . .” (Jer. 33:8); “ But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Ps. 130:4); “ As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12); “ I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not re member thy sins” (Isa. 43:25). Yet it is not a question of motives and stimulants merely that is indi cated in all this. It is one of release from bondage, it is the dissolution of the law’s curse. Under law and its curse a man works for self and Satan, under grace he works for God. It is forgiveness that sets a man a-working for God. He does not work in order to be forgiven but because he has been forgiven, and the consciousness of his sin being pardoned makes him long more for its entire removal than ever he did before. An unforgiven man cannot work. He has not the will nor the power nor the liberty. He is in chains. Is rael in Egypt could not serve Jeho vah. “ . . . Let my people go, that they may serve me,” was God’s message to Pharaoh (Ex. 8:1); first liberty, then service. A forgiven man is the true work- CONTINUED
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