Psalm 99:8 You answered them, O LORD our God: you were a God that forgave them, though you took vengeance of their inventions. A very great and grave mistake about the whole relations of forgiveness and retribution, and about the whole character of that Divine nature from which they both flow is implied in that word "though"; what the psalm really says is, "Thou wast a God who forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance," etc. No antagonism between pardon and retribution; both are regarded as parts of one great whole, and as flowing from the holy love of God. I. FORGIVENESS IS, AT BOTTOM, THE UNDISTURBED COMMUNICATION OF THE LOVE OF GOD TO SINFUL MEN. We are far too apt to think that God pardons men in the fashion in which the sovereign pardons a culprit who has been sentenced to be hanged. Such pardon implies nothing as to the feelings of either the criminal or the monarch. The forgiveness of God is over and over again set forth in Scripture as being a father's forgiveness. Indeed, I do not remember that we ever read of the pardon of our Judge or of our King, but we read "Your heavenly Father will forgive you your trespasses." Let us keep fast by that. And then, let us remember our own childhood. What makes the little face fall, and the tears come to the eyes? Is it your taking down the rod from behind the door, or the grave disapprobation in your face, and the rebuke in your eyes? It is not only the buffet from the father's hand that makes the punishment, but still more the displeasure of the father's heart that makes the child's punishment. And forgiveness is not complete when the father says, "Well, go away, I will not hurt you," but when he says, "Well, come, I am not angry with you, and I love you still." Not putting up the rod, but taking your child to your heart is your forgiveness. II. SUCH PARDON DOES NECESSARILY SWEEP AWAY THE ONE TRUE PENALTY OF SIN. What is the penalty of sin? "The wages of sin is death." What is "death"? The wrenching away of a dependent soul from God. How is that penalty ended? When the soul is united to God in the threefold bond of trust, love, and obedience. The two statements that forgiveness is the communication of the love of God unhindered by man's sin, and that forgiveness is the removal of the punishment of sin, are really but two ways of saying the same thing. III. THE PARDONING MERCY OF GOD LEAVES MANY PENALTIES UNREMOVED. If you waste your youth, no repentance will send the shadow back upon the dial, or recover the ground lost by idleness, or restore the constitution shattered by dissipation, or give again the resources wasted upon vice, or bring back the fleeting opportunities. If you forget God and live without Him in the world, fancying that it is time enough to become "religious" when you "have had your fling" — even were you to come back at last — and remember how few do — you could not obliterate the remembrance of misused years, nor the deep marks which they had left upon imagination and thought, and taste, and habit. The wounds can all be healed indeed; for the Good Physician, blessed be His name, has lancets and bandages, and balm and anodynes for the deadliest, but scars remain even when the gash is closed. IV. PARDONING LOVE SO MODIFIES THE PUNISHMENT THAT IT BECOMES AN OCCASION FOR SOLEMN THANKFULNESS. The outward act remaining the same, its whole aspect to us, the object of it, is changed, when we think of it as flowing from the same love which pardons. It is no harsh — no, nor even only a righteous Judge, who deals with us. We are not crushed between the insensate wheels of a dead machine, nor smitten by the blow of an inflexible fate, but we are chastened by a Father's hand, who loves us too well to do by us that which He forbids us to do by one another, — suffer sin upon our brother. "When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned." The stroke of condemnation will never fall upon our pardoned hearts. That it may not, the loving strokes of His discipline must needs accompany the embrace of His forgiveness. And so the pains change their character, and become things to be desired, to be humbly welcomed, to be patiently borne and used, and even to be woven into our hymns of praise. (A. Maclaren, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou answeredst them, O LORD our God: thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions. |
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