12 - A Forgiving Spirit

Chapter 12 A FORGIVING SPIRIT "Forgive us our Debts, as we forgive our Debtors" In speaking of the spirit with which the particular request for the forgiveness of sin should be offered, we have reserved for a separate chapter the possession of a forgiving spirit in our own bosoms. " Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’’ As Christianity would leave no hopes for the guilty, did it not reveal the truth that there is forgiveness with God for men, so it would lose its luster, did it not reveal the duty of forgiveness from men to one another. A pardoned sinner is never more justly obnoxious to reproach, than when he expresses an unforgiving spirit toward those who have injured him; and he never appears more in his true, heaven imparted, and heaven resembling glory, than when he forgives even as he himself is forgiven of God. The language, " as we forgive our debtors," cannot mean to institute a comparison between God’s mercies and our own; for the disproportion is immeasurable and infinite. The injuries we receive from our fellow-men, in nature, in magnitude, in number, form the extreme contrast, rather than any just and rational comparison with those which God has received from us. Forgiveness in creatures is the same in kind with forgiveness in God; while, in measure and degree, his pardon as far exceeds our own as the heavens are above the earth, and the ocean exceeds the drop of dew. The forgiveness of injuries inflicted on ourselves, is not any equivalent for the mercy we ask of God, nor does it render us in any way deserving of his pardons; for this would countervail the whole spirit of the Gospel, and displace the work of Christ as the only foundation of pardoning mercy. There is a very obvious distinction between the foundation of forgiveness, and the revealed condition of forgiveness. Without the work of Christ, no man may be forgiven, whatever maybe his own personal character; while, in view and on account of his great and meritorious work, forgiveness is imparted only to a well-defined class of men. The Scriptures sometimes specify one Christian grace as the condition of forgiveness, and sometimes another. The sum and substance of their instructions on this subject are, that while no man is entitled to acceptance with God, save for the Redeemer’s obedience to the death of the cross, those and those only are thus entitled who are Christian men, who possess a religious and spiritual character, and are radically different from what they once were, when " dead in trespasses and sins." As one of the exemplifications of this general principle, a forgiving spirit holds a high and distinguished place. Other truths may be taught more frequently in the Bible, but none is taught more plainly than this, that a forgiving spirit to those who have injured us, though not the meritorious condition of forgiveness from God, is that without which none obtain forgiveness. " For if ye forgive men," says the Saviour, " their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses." Elsewhere he says, " When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive your trespasses." Again, he says, " Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Again, it is written, " With the merciful, thou wilt show thyself merciful." And again, as though the Spirit of God would sound the note of alarm on the conscience of every severe and unforgiving man, it stands recorded, " He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy."

We may be in debt to men as well as to God, and men may be indebted to us. They may have done us injury, unprovoked and flagrant injury; as we ourselves have done, in forms so varied, in numbers so countless, in enormity so aggravated, to our Father who is in heaven. The spirit of forgiveness toward them is not a Stoical insensibility to wrong, nor a careless indifference to the injuries inflicted upon us. This forms no part of God’s character toward those who have sinned against Him. There is no being in the universe so sensitive to evil, so alive to the indignity which men have done to his nature, authority and goodness, as that pure and holy Being to whom all sin is "that abominable thing which his soul hateth." Not to be so were connivance at iniquity — a spirit which dwells in no virtuous and honorable mind. Nor is the spirit of forgiveness merely a restraint laid upon the angry passions; a smothering of our resentment; a mere forbearance of the outward acts of retaliation while yet the heart prompts to revenge. There is nothing like God in this; nothing Christ-like; nothing like the spirit of holy love, and the kindness and charity of heaven. Many a mind of lofty bearing retires as it were within itself, and indulges in moody silence the bitterness of its awakened and suppressed emotions of anger. This may be a dignified self-complacency in the soul’s powers of endurance; it may be deceit and hypocrisy; but it is not a forgiving spirit. Many a proud and unforgiving spirit demeans itself thus, which treasures up injury in long and revengeful remembrance; wishes evil to those who have injured him; and if he is not ready to do them evil, rejoices in their calamity. Still less is a forgiving spirit a haughty and contemptuous disregard of those who have wronged us, as if they were beneath our notice. There may be as much malignity and revenge in the heart of such a man, as in the bosom of one who demands the courtesies of social life from his equals at the mouth of a pistol, or at the point of his sword. " Proud and haughty sinner is his name who dealeth in proud wrath." A forgiving spirit is something of loftier origin; i t is a noble, generous. Christian virtue. It takes its rise in that love of God and man which is the fruit of the Spirit and the fulfilling of the law; it is made up of love and forbearance, united with the tenderness of compassion toward those who have injured us, and fortified by some just sense of our own sinfulness and need of forgiveness from God. In the full sense of the thing itself, it consists in the inward spirit of forgiveness and the outward act of reconciliation. It belongs to the heart, just as every other grace has its seat in the inner man. In this view of it, it is the opposite of revenge, which angrily seeks redress for injuries by inflicting injuries in return. It is the inward exercise of kindness and good will toward our enemies and those who have wronged us. It is an abhorrence of their wrong, yet a kind regard for the wrong-doer. It cannot be genuine unless it be accompanied with these benevolent emotions, and at a great remove from all bitterness and wrath. God requires that we forgive from the heart. Anything short of this is hypocrisy, and is accounted as such in the judgment of Him who seeth not as man seeth. The language of the Saviour settles this point. ’’ So likewise," says he, "shall my Heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your heart forgive not every one his brother their trespasses." The requisitions of the Bible stop nothing short of the complete concurrence of the soul in these benevolent emotions. This inward spirit ought to be always in exercise, whatever may be the character of those who have injured us, and whatever their present and future conduct. We may feel benevolently toward them without at all committing ourselves in favor of their conduct, or character. They may repeat the injury they have done us every day of their lives, but this does not warrant in us the spirit of malignity, or unkindness. We should love them still, and do them good as we have opportunity. It is not our place to avenge the wrong they have done; "it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." In addition to this inward spirit of kindness, this constant disposition to forgive, there is also the outward act of reconciliation. Of this we must speak with more caution and discrimination, because a forgiving God here discriminates. He himself is the "great and essential charity;" and we have no desire to be more lavish in outward acts of reconciliation to our enemies than he toward his. His inward spirit of kindness toward his enemies never ceases; nor should ours cease toward our enemies. All the while they remain his enemies he is doing them good; and so should we to our enemies as we have opportunity. But he is not reconciled to them; he does not adopt them into his family; give them his complacency and confidence, and acknowledge and treat them as his friends, until they have become so. Nor ought he to do this. Nor ought we thus to restore those who have injured us to our complacency and confidence, and be outwardly reconciled to them, and treat them as friends so long as they conduct themselves like enemies. The spirit of forgiveness does not require this; Jesus Christ does not require it. ’’ If thy brother sin against thee, and return and say, I repent, forgive him." Forgiveness then, will, from its own kind promptings, become outward reconciliation. It will not be the reconciliation of words; it will not be any mere outward semblance of friendship; it will be frank, full, unfeigned. In fostering such a spirit thus expressed, no man can go too far. " If thy brother trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him." This is Christian forgiveness ; this is forgiving in some faint measure as God forgives; this is placing forgiveness upon true grounds — ground corresponding with the work wrought in the heart of every Christian man by the Holy Spirit. Such forgiveness as God approves is alike the expression and the evidence of a disposition produced by the power of his grace in the soul that is itself forgiven. Our task is comparatively easy, therefore, as we proceed to show why the spirit of forgiveness in men is made a revealed condition of their obtaining forgiveness from God. The reason why a man of an unforgiving spirit cannot obtain forgiveness is, that he is destitute of all true and genuine piety. The force of this remark may perhaps be the better perceived by something like the following observations.

Such a man has no true sense of his own sins. It is not necessary, after what has been said in the two previous chapters, to show that the cure of sin must be preceded by a sense of the malady, and with a humiliating conviction of personal defilement. Those who are sensible that they themselves have done so much to provoke God’s displeasure, and who constantly stand in need of forgiveness, will be slow to demand retribution for the petty injuries they have received from their fellow-men. The measure which an unforgiving spirit would mete out to others, would bear hard upon their own character. A due consideration of their own indebtedness would make them placable, if not suppress all desire of retaliation. The hard-hearted creditor who had just been forgiven the ten thousand talents, and who yet rigidly exacted from another the one hundred pence, and in default thereof cast his debtor into prison, justly excited the indignation of his Lord, and the grief of his fellow-servants. Those cannot think very often, nor reason very justly, nor feel very deeply for their own liabilities, who are thus rigorously severe. It is the most lamentable of all sights to see a man who has received injury from his fellows-worm, so forgetful of his multiplied and aggravated offences against God, as to go to the throne of grace and plead for the pardon of his own sins, in the spirit of revenge toward his offending brother! A sense of his own sins never could have rested with weight upon the mind of such a man; nor could he ever have felt serious and lasting solicitude for his own soul. When one fellow-worm displeases another, the latter is cold and distant; he swells in self-importance; he looks big; there must be negotiation upon negotiation; and after all, there is no heart in the reconciliation. But who art thou that thus judgest another man’s servant ? What wonder if the God of justice should say to such a man, " Pay ME that thou owest !" Nor do we see how such a man can have any true sense of the divine mercy. That he must have made a devout and humble application to the Lord Jesus for mercy; must have succeeded in his suit; and must have some grateful remembrance of those solemn transactions between the God of mercy and his own soul, in order to be a Christian, all will allow.

----We do pray for mercy; And that same prayer should lead us all To render deeds of mercy.

How shall those hope for mercy, rendering none ?’

How do you forgive your fellow-men who trespass against you? This is the test by which the Scriptures determine our own estimate of the boundless mercy in which God hath caused us to hope. It is horrible for a man, malignant against those who have offended him, to come and ask free forgiveness from God. Satisfaction to the utmost farthing is insisted on by the rebel, who, if he enjoys peace at all, must have a free pardon from Him whose mercies are great unto the heavens! An unforgiving spirit has never tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious; it is utterly inconsistent with the Christian hope. Unforgiveness belongs to the unforgiving; it belongs to those who are ’’ hateful and hating one another." Its true and primeval residence is the region of hate — the region of hell. The devil’s malice is more excusable, because he gets no forgiveness. The pardoned sinner can afford to forgive, for he knows what forgiveness is. If others will have revenge, it belongs not to him. He has what no others possess — pardon from the God of pardons — forgiveness from him whom he has provoked more than it is possible for his fellow-men to provoke him. And he has too the consolation that the approving and vigilant eye of the Lord is upon him, and that he has a refuge at his throne which is more than a counterbalance for all that he can endure from his enemies. The throne of grace is accessible to him ; but the face of the Lord is against the revengeful, that he may cut them off.

It is equally true that a man of an unforgiving spirit has no love to God in his heart. There is no surer mark or criterion by which men may determine whether they are in a state of acceptance or condemnation, than love to God. And it must be owing to delusion, or the want of impartial inquiry, if any man, with the Bible in his hands, can persuade himself that love to God is compatible with an unforgiving spirit. For ’’ he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?" The only thing of God which he can see and love, is this creature of God whom he hates. The only thing of God which bears his image, and which God requires him to love, and to forgive, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven him, is his brother against whom he is treasuring up the long arrears of malignity and revenge. "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar." Thus summarily do the Scriptures treat the man who professes to love God, yet has an unforgiving spirit. Never was man more baptized with the love of God, than the disciple who made that unutterably tender appeal, ’’ Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." This is the great principle of forgiveness. If God can see anything in men to love, men may surely see something to love in one another. If He can love creatures thus vile and abject, surely we, if we know anything of the love of God ourselves, can love them also. If He can overlook their faults, we can cast the mantle of heavenly charity over them, and forgive and love them still. If God’s love to us, and ours to him, were the ruling principle of our conduct toward our fellow-men, we should not find so wide a place in our hearts for suspicion and wickedness, for jealousy, hatred, and revenge. We should not find men rejoicing in the calamity of their enemies, aggravating their calamity and their offenses, and holding their persons in abhorrence. Much less should we find men in the church of God, who will not speak to each other for a whole year, dare to come and sit down together at the table of Christ, and commemorate that love to which they are strangers. To injure our fellow-men, is no proof of the love of God in the heart; nor is it any proof of that love, to treasure up the injury. Nor may we overlook the thought, that where the spirit of forgiveness is wanting, there can be no honest regard for the interests of human society . The laws of Christ’s kingdom do not allow any man to live for himself alone. He who does this. is universally despised and condemned. " Israel is an empty vine; he bringeth forth fruit to himself." The man of an unforgiving spirit is governed too much by a regard to himself, and too little by a regard to the happiness of others, to be a Christian man. He attaches no importance to that course of conduct which tends to make the world in which he lives the holier and the happier. The warmth of his benevolence is chilled by too keen a sensibility to his private interests. He cares not to heal the festering sores that are breaking out, and spreading their baleful infection. His is not the chanty which " suffereth long, and is kind," which " is not easily provoked," and " meditates no evil," which " beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things," and "seeketh not her own." Men who, for want of a spirit of kindness, can alienate themselves from the affections of those around them; who are so sensitive and irritable, that they do little else than multiply enemies; who give up all the sweets of human kindness, for the sake of remembering and revenging some worn-out injury, and who forego all the love of friends, because they will not forgive their enemies; cannot be Christians. Animosity between man and man will never cease, acrimony will never be softened to the charity of the Gospel, and men united in fraternal affection, until they learn to "love their enemies, and do good to them that hate them." This view of the influence of an unforgiving spirit is overlooked by the unforgiving. It is not easy for them to estimate the happiness of that community where all is kind and placable, forgiving and merciful.

" The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath. It is thrice blessed;

It blesseth him who gives, and him who takes.

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes The sceptred monarch better than his crown."

How soon would the remembrance of injuries be effaced, and how surely followed by penitence on the one part, and tenderness and generosity on the other, were this spirit to predominate! And even if " it must needs be that offences come," how would their number be lessened, and their obtrusiveness and malignity mitigated! Retaliation provokes. Enmity cannot stand before love.

It were easy to multiply illustrations of the truth that an unforgiving spirit is not the spirit of Christianity, and that a spirit of revenge is not the spirit of prayer. It is a trite saying, but has much point, that ’’ to render good for evil, is Godlike; good for good, manlike; evil for evil, beastlike; evil for good, devil-like." It is the Godlike we should strive after. Not all the wrath of man, nor rage of fiends, could provoke one revengeful look, or angry emotion, in that bosom of love and mercy. Earth and hell did their best to provoke him to the unchanging purpose of destruction; but they could not prevent his sun from rising "on the evil and on the good" nor his rain from descending ’’ on the just, and on the unjust." The earth brings forth her increase, though the foot of rebellion stalks upon it. Nor could all the fury of fiends, nor the malignity of men, prevent him from giving his Son to die, the just One in the place of the unjust. His prayer for them that " hated him without a cause" was ’’ yet in their calamities." Even while he was stretched on the cross, amid their murderous cruelty and insulting mockeries, the last breathings of his heavenly spirit found relief from its own agonies and a palliative for their sins, in the prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Well has it been said, " Socrates died like a Philosopher ; Jesus Christ like a God." This is the true glory of our common Christianity. It would make forgiven man forgiving and happy. It would dry up the sources of his bitter wrangling, his poignant remorse, his corroding self-reproach, his stinging shame. It would chase from his pillow those dreams of violence and blood which haunt the man on whose wrath the sun goes down ; while it would fain bring angels of mercy to keep their watch over the head of the peaceful and forgiving. It would crush the scorpion within the bosom of the unforgiving, that stings him to madness. It would quench the fires that consume him, that he may no longer fan them with his own breath. It has made the only provision for the peace of men — for the peace of the world. It contemplates the universal brotherhood of man as one of its great objects; nor will its legitimate influence be duly felt until the nations " learn war no more." No man can read the New Testament without being struck with its pacific character. The visions of the Golden Age would soon return, did men obey its injunctions and cease to be the avengers of wrong. A dishonest Christian, a debauched Christian, a drunken Christian, a lying Christian, is not a greater absurdity than a contentious, unforgiving Christian. Men of contention cannot be men of prayer. Men whose professional calling exposes them to stormy discussion with their fellow-men; men whose habits of life call them upon the arena of political strife, find within them, too often, such a state of mind as unfits them for fellowship with God. Much less can a man pray with the spirit of revenge rankling in his bosom. His conscience hesitates, his lips falter when he says, " Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us ;" lest he should be using the prayer against himself, and invoking a curse rather than a blessing. God will take the unforgiving at their word. The denunciations of the Bible should fall on the ear of such a man like the knell of the second death. " O thou wicked servant! shouldest thou not have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had compassion on thee ? Not satisfied with having inculcated the duty of forgiveness in a didactic form, he has put a daily prayer into our lips, which, if we ourselves possess not a forgiving spirit, invokes him to say to us as he does to the slothful servant, "Out of thine own mouth do I condemn thee I"

History furnishes an affecting illustration of the need of a spirit of forgiveness, in order to the retaining of our evidence of forgiveness from God, There was in the church at Antioch, in the third century, a minister by the name of Sapricius, and a layman by the name of Nicephorus, who after long intimacy had fallen into an unhappy quarrel, and carried it so far that they would not speak to each other when they met. After a while Nicephorus relented, and took every measure for reconciliation, but in vain. He even threw himself at the feet of his former friend, and entreated forgiveness for the Lord’s sake, but without effect. About this time, a new storm of persecution arose, and Sapricius was marked out as one of the victims. The magistrates ordered him to obey the Emperor, and sacrifice to the heathen god. But he appeared ready to witness a good confession, and replied in an expression of his higher allegiance to the King of kings, " Perish idols, which can do neither harm, nor good!" The torture was applier and he bore it firmly. The magistrate then commanded him to be beheaded, and while he was led out to execution, Nicephorus followed him, entreating his forgiveness. But it was in vain; Sapricius unforgiving temper remained to the last. At this juncture did the Saviour make good his word, " If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive your trespasses." For at this trying period, all Sapricius’ firmness forsook him; the fear of death overpowered him, he recanted, and saved his life, while seemingly on the point of seizing the crown of martyrdom. While at the same time the Saviour’s faithfulness was remarkably expressed toward the individual who had manifested a forgiving spirit. Nicephorus, annoyed at so unexpected a change in Sapricius, exhorted him to adhere to the faith, but in vain. And then himself flaming with zeal for the Christian cause, so dishonored, turned to the executioners and said, ’’ I believe in the name of the Lord Jesus, whom he has renounced." This was reported to the Emperor, and Nicephorus received the crown of martyrdom! We cannot rely upon the divine mercy for ourselves, while indulging an unforgiving and unchristian spirit toward others.

O that the divine pattern of our blessed Master were more constantly before the eye of his own followers! That meek and forgiving spirit of his, like ’’ the angel standing in the sun" was the brightest of that bright assemblage of excellencies that were his unequal adornment. The impressions which men receive of his religion are, to no small extent, derived from the spirit and conduct of his disciples. Hatred, ill will, and revenge, are not the most convincing evidence of the power of Christianity; and in giving way to them his disciples obstruct the influence of those truths which are the power of God to salvation. While on the other hand, the kind and conciliatory spirit of the Gospel, expressed especially in the forgiveness of injuries, wins upon the suspicion and jealousy of its opposers and extorts a tribute of respect, if not of admiration, for principles of such efficacy over the turbulent passions of men.