WHAT IS PARDON?

"But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." — Luke xv. 20-24 (A.V.).

"But while he was yet afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him (Gr. kissed him much). And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight s I am no more worthy to be called thy son (marg. Some ancient authorities add make me as one of thy hired servants. See ver. 19). But the father said to his servants (marg. Gr. bondservants ), Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and make merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." — (R.V.)

The son's return at once meets the father's welcome; the penitence is at once followed by the pardon. In the Christian revelation the pardon is offered that the penitence may be felt. But passing over this difference, what does the pardon as here described tell us of what forgiveness is? It suggests to us (1) the motive, (2) the method, and (3) the measure of pardon.

1. The Motive.

(1) The motive is compassion; it is love moved to pity; it is literally a suffering with the sinner. "When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion." We have already seen how God's suffering with the sinner is shown in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, in which God in personal experience, as real to the Father God as to the Incarnate Son, "tastes death for every man," descends to the depths of humiliation. We shall not be vainly imagining, if we think of the father in the sight of his son realising the misery and shame and want of the far country, and even think of him as ever with his son in that far country, wondering what his lot might be. The story itself gives the impression that the compassion began only when the prodigal was seen; even although it did not wait for the first words of penitence. But when we think of God we must never think of God's pity as waiting the first movements of penitence. For while penitence is the condition of the human experience of the saving love of God, it is not the source of the compassion in the heart of God. God is eternally and infinitely love, and we may dare to believe that even the sin of the most impenitent moves Him to pity, to seek and to save the lost. It is needful to dwell on this obvious truth, for many Christian minds; for there are some believers who have not taken into their souls the whole Christian revelation. It is sometimes said that God will forgive, if a man will be sorry for, and turn from, his sins. It is a not uncommon error that the motive of God's pardon is man's penitence, that God Himself waits to be moved by man's emotion. But this is a misinterpretation of the character of God; man does not change God's disposition. All the motives of God's dealings lie within His own absolute perfection as love. What is the novelty of the Christian Gospel is just this, that God freely offers forgiveness as a motive of man's penitence; He seeks to save before man wants to be saved.

(2) It is desirable in preaching at times to lay stress on this, as there are anxious, timid souls, who seem to think that they must reach a certain degree of penitence before they can be assured of God's pardon. They seem to believe that by intense emotion they can and must change God's disposition. When they do not at once feel the joy of God's forgiveness, they begin to be afraid that they are not penitent enough, that they must be still more sorry than they are to move God to forgiveness. The motive of God's pardon, it must be insisted, lies not in anything that man can feel or will, but in what God Himself is. The necessity for penitence lies in man, and not in God. If pardon be, as we shall next show, a restoration of man to his filial communion with God, it is essential that there be in man a judgment of his own sin corresponding to God's judgment of it. There can be fellowship only when there is likeness; if we are to be the children of God in trust and obedience, we must love what God loves, and hate what He hates. The measure in which we recover our filial communion with God does depend on the measure of the change of mind in us, God's estimate of sin becoming ours. As it is in Christ's Cross that the divine judgment on sin is most fully expressed, our penitence becomes adequate in the measure in which we are crucified with Christ.

2. The Method.

(1) The father ran, and fell on the prodigal's neck, and kissed him. Pardon is God's act fully to restore man to Himself. It is not the cancelling of penalty primarily, although the changed relation to God will alter, if not the fact, yet the meaning and the aim, of even the immediate and inevitable consequences of sin. It is first of all and most of all the recovery of communion between God and man. The pardon is given before the confession is made; and the pardon so awakens the filial consciousness in the prodigal that while he still confesses his unworthiness, the thought of any other relation than that of son is banished from his mind. The prayer resolved on, "Make me as one of thy hired servants," is never uttered. The kiss made any such petition impossible; only at a distance from the father could any other position than that of son seem even tolerable. That man thinks, feels, and wills himself the child of God in thankfulness and trustfulness, love and surrender — this is what makes forgiveness; and anything else or less would not be what man needs, and what God bestows.

(2) We must not, on the other hand, limit the effects of the fact of forgiveness, as is often done. It is sometimes said that all the results of sin must be borne, even by the penitent; the uttermost farthing of the physical, social, and moral consequences must be paid. This is not true; and God be praised that it is not true. God does not work a miracle of His omnipotence to detach a man from his sinful past so completely that none of the effects of that sin will continue. A saint may have a diseased body till death brings release; a man who has turned from his evil way may never quite recover his lost reputation with his fellow-men; the old temptations may still assail, the old habits may still seek to recover their grasp; and the removal of the marred character is often a slow and painful process, but, nevertheless, when a man's relation to God is changed, then all is changed, the man having himself become a new creature, the old things have passed away, and all things have become new. We are learning that courage and hope have an influence even on the physical condition; suffering patiently borne is not so great an evil as when it is rebelliously endured. It is the shame of even Christian men that the converted evil-doer is not welcomed back to confidence and esteem. Sometimes there may be need of caution, as there are men sunk so low morally and religiously that they will pretend conversion for worldly ends; but generosity of judgment is one of God's own redemptive energies through men. With God upon his side, with the burden of his guilt lifted from his conscience, with the assurance of the sufficiency of God's grace, a man may enter on the moral struggle with the assurance of victory in the end. Whatever trials or sorrows or struggles remain, for the man forgiven all punishment has ceased, and he can make the chastisements of life the means of self-development in the likeness of the child of God. In forgiveness God gives man His companionship, through love makes man's life his own. That divine approach begins before man's return; for in Jesus Christ God has entered into the life of. man, and made the suffering, sorrow, and shame of man's sin His own sacrifice. By the self-identification of love God in Christ has taken our place, and it is His fellowship in the sacrifice with us that evokes the penitence and faith which result in our salvation in our fellowship with Him. Personal union of God and man — that is how God forgives.

3. The Measure.

(1) How far does that personal union go? The language of the parable is borrowed from Eastern custom; but it makes plain the truth that God restores the penitent and pardoned not only to their full sonship, but, as it would even seem, to a sonship more glorious and blessed even than would have been possible had there been no interruption of the fellowship. This is the paradox of Christian experience, which we must state carefully to avoid error, but which we cannot leave unexpressed lest we should conceal the truth. On the one hand, we must hold that sin is evil, and evil only, and that it is not, and was not meant to be, the means of higher good. A phrase like Augustine's felix culpa may be "procuress to the lords of hell." But, on the other hand, we cannot ignore a saying like that of Jesus, "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." The joy of recovery is in these parables represented as greater than could be the comfort of continued possession. Would the prodigal have ever enjoyed such bliss in the father's love, or have had such tokens of the father's joy, had he remained in the home? We cannot fail to ask ourselves such a question. It is not wise or right, however, to turn such a suggestion into a dogma, and to assert that a world without evil would have been the poorer, because lacking the good of the redemptive love of God, and a sinless humanity less blessed because without the joy of being forgiven.

(2) Without pursuing this thought any further, we may insist that when God pardons He pardons to the uttermost, and all the perfection, glory, and blessedness of the child of God is freely given to the saved sinner. In human experience, however, God's grace is conditioned, and so limited by man's faith. A man has as much good out of God's pardon as he is willing and able to possess. In the parable the prodigal gets all the blessing of forgiveness at once; but in human experience generally the full possession comes very slowly. Sometimes even in the father's house the spirit of the hired servant survives; and obedience is rendered as service, and blessing is received as wages. A false humility sometimes refuses the full joy of salvation; and men continue in trembling anxiety for thensouls, when they might have the full assurance of faith. This attitude, more common in former days than it is now, was due to failure to receive the revelation of God distinctive of Jesus Christ. Conceptions of God at a lower stage in the progress of revelation were allowed to obscure the glory of the Fatherhood made known in Jesus Christ. It is impossible to estimate for how much torture and anguish of soul the doctrine of election, for instance, has been responsible; how men and women have tormented themselves to find the proof of their election in the assurance of faith, and when they were sure of faith, how they struggled for the faith of assurance; and so the process of salvation was made a labour and a heavy burden, and not a rest to the soul.

(3) Surely Jesus meant that men should accept fully what God offers freely; penitence should reinforce and not hinder faith; humility is the companion and not the rival of confidence. We should not be so sorry for our sins that we cannot be sure of our forgiveness; for this is not a godly sorrow that bringeth life, but an ungodly that worketh death. Great as is our sense of our sinfulness, greater still should be our assurance of the divine forgiveness that cancels the sin. The prodigal surely forgot the far country, the swine, and the husks in the robe, the ring, the shoes, and the feast. The parable does not follow his career any further; but from Christian experience we can learn that the rapture of the new experience is sometimes followed, although it need not be, by depression, by a return of old temptations, doubts, and fears; but it also teaches us that the life in the father's house, if only faith ever claims grace, can be one of ever closer fellowship with, of ever greater likeness to, the father, of a joy not less real, even if less intense, than the first moments of forgiveness. For God in His grace provides abundantly all that the renewed soul needs for fullest growth, and freest exercise. There is no grudging in God's as there is often in man's forgiveness. When He pardons, He pardons with overflowing love; and the only measure of the pardon of God is the love of God, which is as measureless as His eternal and infinite Being.