56. Forgiveness without Substitution Impossible

Forgiveness without Substitution Impossible

Moreover, forgiveness apart from substitution is wholly impossible. In every act of forgiveness, the one who is sinned against becomes the substitute for the one he forgives, as he voluntarily accepts, unrecompensed, the consequences of the guilty one’s sin, that he may be relieved of those consequences. It is impossible, for example, to forgive a debt except by substitution. For if a man cancels a debt he loses the amount, and thus bears in his person, as the debtor’s substitute, the consequences of the forgiveness he grants. In the same way, if he forgives an injury, he consents to endure it without reparation or complaint, that the one who injured him may be free from the penalty he has the right to exact. Forgiveness is wholly out of the question except on the basis of substitution. This means, if it means anything at all, that the innocent suffer for the guilty every time sin is forgiven. It means that a forgiveness in which the innocent do not suffer for the guilty is wholly impossible. And it means that it is morally right for the innocent to suffer for the guilty, if they do so voluntarily, else there could never have been forgiveness in the past, nor could forgiveness ever be possible in the future. And so, since “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), and thus a blow of destruction aimed at the Lawgiver, it must, in the nature of things, fall on God, either in the loss of those He gave to Himself as the objects of His love, or in their salvation to His love by accepting their penalty in their stead. In meeting the third requirement of a substitute, Christ lays His life down voluntarily, and so He Himself is not injured. For He says: “I lay my life down that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it again” (John 10:18). Not the slightest pressure or compulsion is brought to bear on Him, so the voluntariness of His death is perfect. The urge behind the act is wholly from the depths of His own heart of love. This disposes of the claim that Christ was a martyr to a cause. No martyr ever lays his life down; it is taken from him. Moreover, if there ever is a time when a martyr experiences the exquisite joy of the most intimate possible fellowship with God, it is in the hour of his martyrdom. But with Christ there was the unspeakable pain of the averted face of His Father and the separation of denied fellowship. That is never the lot of a martyr.

Neither is Christ here merely a Teacher setting an example to those He would teach. For then His life, which was from its beginning on earth wholly sacrificial in both motive and expression, was all the example His teaching needed, and He could have gone right on into heaven from the Mount of Transfiguration. There is infinitely more than any such things as these in His death.