Pardon

If a man has offended me I can forgive him; but if he has offended God I cannot forgive him. The only discharge possible is pardon by God; but then it is the only pardon necessary.

u I will cast thy sins into the depths of the sea,” — not into the shallows where they might be fished up again, but into the depths of the sea, where Satan himself cannot find them. There are no such things as sins recorded against God’s people. Christ has so taken them away, that sin becomes a nonentity to Christians — through Jesu’s blood they are clean.

It is only God that can forgive satisfactorily; no human pardon can ease the troubled conscience. The self-righteous Pharisee may be content to give himself into the hands of a priest to be rocked to sleep in the cradle of delusion, but the poor convinced sinner wants something more than the arrogant dictum of a priest — he feels all is vain, — unless Jehovah himself shall say, “I have blotted out thy sins for mine own sake.”

By nature man conceives that he does not need Christ; he thinks that he has a robe of righteousness of his own, that he is well-dressed, that he is not naked, that he needs not Christ’s blood to wash him, that he is not black or crimson, and needs no grace to purify him. No man knows his need until God shows it to him; and, until the Holy Spirit reveals the necessity of pardon, no man will seek pardon.

The one pardoning word of the Lord of all absolution hath put music into all things, even as the trump of the archangel shall breathe life into the dead.

Unutterable mercy! There is no sinner out of hell so black but that God can wash him white. There is not out of the pit one so guilty that God is not able and willing to forgive him.