Fear, the Fruit of Divine Forgiveness

“There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.” — PSALM cxxx. 4.

“1T7ERE we told that the worm that crawls, wriggling across our path, would one day rise a winged form to soar aloft and glitter in the sunny air like a living gem; were we told that a dry, husky, sapless, dead-like thing, if buried, would spring from its grave, changed in colour and form, to become a flower of fairest hues, or a tree with tough timbers to form the ribs, or tall stem the mast of a mighty ship; were we told that water may be made as hard as stone, or that, before the smoke of its last gun has melted into air, the news of a battle may be borne hundreds of miles away, along an iron wire, through the bowels of mountains, or over the bed of the sea; which of us, if previously ignorant of them, would not be filled with wonder, if not with incredulity? We meet much to startle us, much that is unlikely, unexpected in the works of God. No wonder, therefore, that we should stumble on passages to startle us here and there in his Word; statements of duty, of fact, of doctrine, to surprise us, and prompt the exclamation of Nicodemus, when, hearing from our Saviour that man must be born again, he exclaimed, How can these things be 1

Take, for example, such duties as these: “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.” “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” How natural for men, ignorant of the power of grace, as some are of those powers in nature that change a creeping worm into a winged insect, or water which a breath can ruffle into a pavement as solid as stone, and deeming such heights of virtue im possible, to exclaim with the Jewish ruler, How can these things be ‘I So also might they have said, who listened with astonishment to the opening sentences of our Lord’s first and of the world’s greatest sermon — “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “Blessed are they that mourn,” “Blessed are the meek,” “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.” This was a flight as high above the style of common preachers as that of the eagle disturbed in her mountain solitudes, and, at that moment, soaring in the blue heavens above their heads. Accustomed to shrink from poverty in every form, from loss and grief, from persecution and calumny, as evils to be avoided, I can fancy the people casting on each other looks of surprise, doubt, and amazement, which said, as plainly as spoken words, How can these things be?

Then there are doctrinal statements in the Word of God where the two parts of the sentence do not seem to hang well together. For example, “Hearken unto me, ye stout-hearted, that are far from righteousness.” God here brings a charge of guilt against his people; and how does he wind up the sentence? Imagine a trial for murder, for instance! Arrayed in his robes of office, the judge, amid solemn silence, receives their verdict from the jury. It is, Guilty. And in what terms does he now address the pale, wretched, trembling felon at the bar! Fixing on him eyes full at once of pity and of horror, he says, You have been charged with the crime of murder, and, after a fair, full, patient trial, have been found guilty; and now the sentence of the law is, that you be taken back to prison, and from prison to the place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck till you are dead. Where man begins with a conviction, he ends with condemnation; a judgment of guilt is followed up by a sentence of death. Not so God in this case. Hearken unto me, ye stout hearted, ye guilty, bold, bad, daring sinners, that are far from righteousness — what follows? Not, I will beat your stout-heartedness out of you, breaking you with a rod of iron, dashing you in pieces like a potter’s vessel; but, “I bring near my righteousness.” Had this address — calling up the pictures of the prodigal kneeling at his father’s feet, of Peter without, weeping bitterly and filling the ear of night with long-drawn sobs, of the woman washing Christ’s feet with tears, and wiping them with her golden tresses — begun differently; had it begun thus, Hearken unto me, ye bleeding, broken-hearted ones, that are far from righteousness, I bring near mine, its conclusion had been less surprising. But it is as if a great, black, lurid, leaden cloud, on which we have been gazing with silent dread, expecting it each moment to burst in thunders, were to dissolve itself in a shower which cools the sultry air, and refreshes the thirsty ground.

Such another example of apparent incongruity is afforded by the first and second members of the text, “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared!” That thou mayest be feared! we are ready .to ask, How does that follow? How can these things be 1 There is forgiveness with thee! a blessed truth that! one we gladly assent to; nay, hail, as the Israelites, on that night when the sea roared in their front and Egypt pressed on their rear, hailed the path which, stretching from shore to shore, opened them a way of escape. But for that they must have all been drowned; but for this we must have all been damned — for were God to mark iniquity, or enter into judgment, who could stand? who could answer for one of a thousand ]

In opening up the subject of my text I observe, I. That there must be something peculiar about God’s forgiveness that it leads to fear.

“Honour thy father and thy mother,” says the law, “that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” But how can this be done when parents, ever threatening, and hardly ever punishing, set their children an example of weakness, if not of wickedness 1 “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,” and must be separated from it by beating, as the husk from the grain ere it is fit for the oven, or the woody fibre from the flax ere it is fit for the loom. Hence Solomon says, He that spareth his rod hateth his son. It is the forked lightning which, leaping from the clouds with a roar, rends the stoutest oak, men dread; not the sheet lightning, which, though startling us at first as it glares on the darkness of night, we have learned to regard with indifference. It shines, but does not strike; it flashes, but does not fall. No parents are less revered by their children than those who deal in empty threats, and reverse, if I may say so, the exclamation of Isaac, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. So to threaten and not to punish is about as fatal to the well-being of a family, as to promise and not reward. An act of forgiveness following on every offence slacks the bonds of obedience; and a constant repetition of acts of forgiveness on the part of a weak parent, encourages a constant repetition of acts of offence on the part of a wicked child. By and by the hand that has sown the wind reaps the whirlwind. Disobedience in the child grows into a habit; its nature becomes thoroughly perverted; its regard for parental authority dies; and in the indulgent parents, whose gray hairs their children treat with contempt and probably bring with sorrow to the grave, in the wretchedness of their homes and the utter wreck of their families, we have an illustration of this grand law of domestic life, that where parents will not punish their children, their children, the least guilty party and most sinned against, will punish them. There must, therefore, be a very essential difference between the forgiveness of our heavenly and that of many an earthly father, else were these words not true, “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared,”

Had my text run thus, There is power, justice, anger, vengeance with thee; or, in accordance with such statements as these, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them,” “The soul that sinneth, it shall die;” had my text said, There is truth with thee, who would not have seen this to be the plain, natural, solemn conclusion, “that thou mayest be feared!” Let God arm himself with terrors, and we feel that he is to be feared.

On the deep, where giant billows, rushing on with foaming crest, threaten instant destruction; beneath the lurid sky when, bursting in thunder peals, every bolt threatens instant death; when the pestilence, wrapped in folds of poisonous vapours, walks the streets of an alarmed city, and funerals are met at every turn, and friends and neighbours seized in the darkness of the night are dead before morning, stubborn knees bend in prayer, and terror sits on the faces of stout-hearted men; ah, then “the perpetual hills did bow, .... the mountains saw thee, and they trembled;” or in the words of another prophet, “The lion hath roared, who will not fear 1” And so, had my text in connexion with God introduced scenes of terror — the great white throne; the books of judgment; the falling heavens; the dying sun; the departing earth; the pit; the smoke of torment; the worm that never dies, and the fire that is never quenched; the solemn scene that shall wind up the close of all things, a God in judgment, and a world in flames — all hearts would have responded like an echo, to the text, and this question had trembled on our lips, “Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy.”

But this is not the way. And how is it, that while the parents who constantly forgive are not feared, God, with whom is forgiveness, is? why is it that forgiveness does not in his case, as in theirs, breed insolent presumption? What is that strange and potent element in divine forgiveness which makes the forgiven fear — making me more afraid to sin beside the Cross of Calvary, with its quiet, pale, dead, bleeding burden, than if I stood at the foot of Sinai amid the thunders, lightnings, and trumpet peals that made Moses him self exceedingly fear and quake1? In other words, how is it that, because there is not power, nor judgment, nor terror, but forgiveness with God, he is there fore to be feared, and is feared 1

II. Let me explain those peculiar characters in the forgiveness of God which breed fear, not presumption, in the forgiven.

i. The manner of the forgiveness sets forth the holiness of God and the evils of sin in the strongest light.

The heathen have little fear of their gods. How should they fear them ] They can make a god out of a piece of wood, or buy one for a shilling. With how little reverence some treat their divinities is related by a missionary who saw what he relates with his own eyes. The country had been suffering from long and severe drought; and unless rain came, the fields must wither, and the people die of famine. Prayer was made to their gods, with whom their worshippers, having received no answer, got very angry; and as I have seen a child beat the table on which, falling, he had hurt his head, or with little hands beat the nurse who, refusing some request, had crossed his temper, the missionary saw these simple, ignorant, blinded pagans drag their idols from the temple, and, pouring on their heads a torrent of reproaches, whip them soundly. And when we turn from such rude barbarians to the polished heathens of Greece and Rome, how little reverence did they entertain for their gods! and, though possessing a code of moral laws in some respects not much inferior to our own, how did the great mass of them live impure and unholy, in flagrant violation of all morality! Observant of the ceremonial parts of their religion, they allowed its moral laws to be no check on their vices. By the masses these laws were openly, systematically, and shamelessly violated. It is so still among heathens, who, though pagans, are not barbarians — among, for example, both the Buddhists and Hindoos of the East. Read the moral precepts of Buddha, and you will be astonished at their purity. Their correspondence with our own ten commandments, which is as startling as it is pleasing, presents a most remarkable illustration of the fact that the law which God wrote on the granite tables of Sinai was a copy of the old law that he had written on the fleshy tables of man’s heart, where you may still trace the original writing, like the mutilated inscription on a shattered and weathered stone. Yet what effect have these admirable laws on the habits of the people 1 None, or almost none, in restraining them from the practice of the grossest vices; exerting as little influence on their lives as do the stars on our destinies.

How do we account for these facts 1 Nothing more easy. These nations, like ourselves, believe in a future state and a judgment to come; their world beyond the grave, no less than ours, has its heaven and hell; and human fancy, under an awakened and alarmed conscience, has pictured nothing more dreadful than the punishments of their Tartarus, the torments of their damned. But what blunts the edge of all this, neutralising its power over their hearts, and making it practically of little, or rather of no avail, is the fact that, according to their creed, sin is forgiven on very easy terms. That is the dead fly in all systems of salvation by works. Pagan or popish, they are immoral in their tendency. This explains why those who have been most taught to seek salvation through good works have been least distinguished for the practice of them; and why the more these, substituted for the Cross, have been preached on the Sabbath-day, the less they have been practised throughout the week. For, to return to the case of the heathen, how could they think sin to be exceedingly sinful, or, holding their gods in reverence, fear to offend them, when, according to the terms on which forgiveness was granted, it was safer to offend God than men? — man requiring his debtor to pay the uttermost farthing, but God requiring of one who sought to escape the wrath and curse due to him for sin, only some words of prayers, or the performance of a religious ceremony, or the blood of some brute creature. The natural, logical, inevitable conclusion which men

30 Fear, the Fridt of

drew from such views was, that the gods attached little importance to their own laws, else they would not be so easily appeased by the transgressors of them. There was forgiveness with them, but it was not of a kind to deter their worshippers from sin — filling their hearts with godly fear.

Turn now to the cross of Calvary, to that august and awful spectacle on which angels, suspending their songs, are gazing in silent wonder. By that bloody tree, under that frowning sky, the earth trembling beneath our feet and the sun darkened above our heads, does sin seem a light and little thing? In God’s words to Ezekiel, while I point to that cross, I ask, “Hast thou seen this, O son of man 1 Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here V A little thing 1 Sin a little thing 1 You think so and you are right, if, as my breath blows out a candle, or a drop of water quenches it, a prayer, a penitent sigh, or a few dropping tears can extinguish the wrath of God. It is so, if the mere expression of our sorrow, a slight repentance, can pay our debts to God, though, as you know well, they would be accepted as payment of them by no one else. It is so, if that blinded Papist, who embraces a life of poverty, who leaves a pillow of down for a bed on the cold ground, who wears a shirt of sackcloth, who, summoned by the convent bell, rises at midnight to prayer, or, fleeing the haunts of men, seeks the desert and the society of beasts, can, by such self-denial, make atonement to God for the sins of his soul. Great as his sufferings may be, an eternity of happiness is cheaply purchased by a whole lifetime of pain — as a lifetime of pleasure is certainly a dear bargain if enjoyed at the expense of eternal pains. But if, ere one sin could be pardoned or one sinner saved, heaven must give up the Lord of Glory, and the Son of God must die; if justice accepts no cheaper sacrifice j if “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved but the name,” nor other blood whereby we can be washed but the blood of Jesus, sin is no light and little thing.

“Wherewith,” asks the prophet, “shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God1? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil 1” Thousands of rams! The smoke of such a sacrifice ascending to the skies, and rolling its murky clouds over the face of heaven, might blot out the sun; but it hides not the smallest sin from the keen eyes of God. Ten thousands of rivers of oil! Pour them on the stormy sea when our bark is battling for life, and they lay its roughest waves; but it needs the form and feet, the presence and the voice of our Redeemer, to turn the storm within my soul into a calm, and say to a troubled conscience, Peace, be still. But the prophet speaks of a sacrifice more costly than flocks of rams or rivers of oil.” Shall I give my first-bom for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul V Well, fancy that the price demanded by God for sin, and that you see a father about to pay it. With downcast head, and slow, reluctant steps, he approaches the altar where his first-born lies, ready bound. You see him kneel to embrace and kiss his boy; to beg delay; to pray the stern heavens for pity or for strength to do this stern duty. He rises, and while the mother in anguish covers her eyes, he slowly bares the steel and raises his arm to strike; and when your sight grows dim, your ears catch a dull stroke and a deep groan, followed by a gush of blood; now, as you fly a scene where the father lies fallen, fainting, on the bloody corpse, were such the price God required for sin, how would you exclaim, It is not a light and little thing to sin against the Lord — Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods — Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts!

It is by an altar and through a victim that there is forgiveness with God; pardon flows to men in a stream of blood. But here the altar is a cross, and its victim is the Son of the Highest. “Hast thou seen this, O son of man V — God incarnate hung between two thieves; the Author of all life yielding up his own; the conqueror of death dying; the feet that walked the bil lows, the hands that raised the dead and burst the fetters of the tomb, nailed to a bloody tree — for thee — all for thee — that thou mightest be forgiven? With his dying eyes fixed on you, within sound of his dying groans, and of that cry that startled the hea vens, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me 1 does not sin, only to be atoned for by so great a sacrifice, appear exceeding sinful 1 There is forgiveness, but after a fashion that should teach us to fear, and, in life’s lightest hours, to join trembling with our mirth. Our pardon is written in letters of blood; the hand that bestows the crown bears the marks of a cross j it is a wounded form, a “Lamb as it had been slain,” that fills the throne of the universe. Looking at these things, “Who shall not fear thee, O Lord?” If such things were done in the green tree, oh! what shall be done in the diy 1 If God did not spare his only-begotten and well-beloved Son when he took our sins on him, how shall he spare those who prefer their sins to their Saviour — neglecting this great sal vation1?

2. The manner of forgiveness sets forth not only God’s hatred of sin, but his love to sinners in the strongest light.

Parents are often moved to forgive, or at least not to punish, their children from selfish motives, over looking the offences not so much because they love their children as that they love themselves — them selves better than their children. Of a tender and sensitive nature, the parent in punishing often feels more acutely than the child who is punished; the strokes that fall on its flesh fall on his bleeding heart.

And it inflicts such distress on many to see the tears standing in a child’s eye and to hear its cries, that they, to escape this pain, allow their children to go unpunished; and since, in Solomon’s judgment, this is practically to hate the child, how much did we owe those who, having, in the days of their flesh, not for their own pleasure, but with much self-inflicted pain, corrected us for our good, have left us to regret that when we had them we did not prize them more and pay them greater reverence! It may be no proof of parental love for a parent to forgive.

Besides, to forgive man in any circumstances costs us nothing. Say that he has defrauded me; injured my reputation; attempted my life; and suppose such an enemy in my power; what does it cost me to forgive him 1 Let us see. To reduce him to poverty would make me no richer; to destroy his peace would not restore my own; to hurt him would not heal me; to break his heart would not bind up mine; to cast a blot on his reputation would restore no lustre to my name; to take his life, saying with the bloody Papist and persecutor of God’s saints in France, “Nothing smells so sweet as the dead body of an enemy,” would not in sure me against the stroke of death, nor lengthen my life by a single hour. It is no great proof of love after all for you or me to forget an injury and forgive the injurer. To pardon a criminal may smooth the cares and soothe the sorrows of a royal pillow, but adds none to them: it may augment but cannot diminish the lustre of a crown. It is a happy memory that remembers kindness, and forgets offences. It is a far nobler thing to conquer one’s passions than to crush a foe; and sweeter than gratified revenge are his feelings who, when his enemy hungers, feeds him; when he thirsts, gives him drink. In so doing, man exhibits somewhat of the nature, and tastes something of the happiness, of God.

From the forgiveness of man turn to that of God. It is hard to say whether it most illustrates his hatred of our sins or his love of ourselves. It costs man nothing to forgive, but it cost God his Son. His Son 1 How painful it is to look on a dying son — even a dying infant; to watch life’s sad and solemn ebbings; to see the last quiver of the little lips; to lay the pale, cold, dead body we have so often carried in our happy arms, in the coffin and the cold grave 1 I dare not say that God bent over his dying Son with feelings corresponding to ours; that he hung over the cross as we have hung over the cradle; or that the strange perturbations in nature, a trembling earth and rending rocks, heavens palled in darkness, and the sun turned pale with terror, though they may perhaps have extended to worlds beyond our own, reached up to the throne of nature’s God. I cannot fathom, and I dare not fancy the feelings of the eternal Father, when he saw the Son whom he loved with infinite affection spit upon, scourged, reviled, bleeding, dying ori the accursed tree. But how must he have loved you for whom he gave a Son so loved? and how will the love this breeds in you make you fear to dishonour or displease one who has so loved you — securing your forgiveness on such an immovable foundation and at so great a price.

To believe yourselves forgiven, while you love sin and live in the practice of it, is to believe a lie — a monstrous lie. Whom God justifies he sanctifies, and the sense of forgiveness which is inwrought by his Holy Spirit, cannot fail to produce holy fears and strenuous efforts after new obedience — such an effect as resulted in a case which not inaptly illustrates both the way in which God deals with sinners, and the obedience that springs from a sense of forgiveness. A soldier, whose regiment lay in a garrison town in England, was about to be brought before his commanding officer for some offence. He was an old offender, and had been often punished. Here he is again, said the officer, on his name being mentioned; everything — flogging, disgrace, imprisonment — has been tried with him. Whereupon the Serjeant stepped forward, and apologising for the liberty he took, said, There is one thing which has never been done with him yet, sir. What is that? was the answer. Well, sir, said the serjeant, he has never been forgiven. For given! exclaimed the colonel, surprised at the suggestion. He reflected for a few minutes, ordered the culprit to be brought in, and asked him what he had to say to the charge? Nothing, sir, was his reply only

I am sorry for what I have done. Turning a kind and pitiful look on the man, who expected nothing else than that his punishment would be increased with the repetition of his offence, the colonel addressed him, saying, Well, we have resolved to forgive you! The soldier was struck dumb with astonishment; the tears started in his eyes, and he wept like a child. He was humbled to the dust, he thanked his officer and retired — to be the old, refractory, incorrigible man 1 No; he was another man from that day forward. He who tells the story had him for years under his eye, and a better conducted man never wore the Queen’s colours. In him kindness bent one whom harshness could not break; he was conquered by mercy, and, forgiven, ever afterwards feared to offend. Shall the goodness and grace of God have less effect on us? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound 1 God forbid. Let the forgiven fear; and, oh, let none offered a greater forgiveness, a pardon which cost God his Son, refuse so great a boon! Weigh well, I pray you, these solemn words, He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the Covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?