The Doctrine of Forgiveness (2)

Rev Neil M Ross

(5) Forgiveness and acceptance by God.

The satisfaction which Christ rendered to divine justice is the procuring cause, not only of the forgiveness of believing sinners, but also of God “accounting and accepting their persons as righteous”. Pardon and acceptance by God are inseparably connected. As Robert Shaw explains, “the pardon of sin alone would only restore the believer to such a state of probation as that from which Adam fell; he [the believer] would be under no legal charge of guilt, but still he would have no legal title to eternal life. But when God justifies a sinner, He does not merely absolve him from guilt, or from a liableness to eternal death; He also pronounces him righteous, and, as such, entitled to eternal life.”

Why, we may ask, did the Westminster divines mention pardon before acceptance in the Confession and Catechisms? “Because,” says James Fisher, “till the sentence of the broken law be dissolved by pardon, it is impossible that our persons can be accepted, or any blessing of the covenant conferred upon us, [see] Heb 8:10-13, where, after a great many other promised blessings, it is added in verse 12, ‘For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more,’ intimating that the pardon of sin led the way to other covenant blessings.”

Scripture itself sometimes so emphasises remission of sin that it appears to constitute the whole of justification. In Romans 4:6-8 we read, “Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” It is this very passage which, as R L Dabney notes, the Arminian uses to present justification as “nothing but simple forgiveness, asserting that, as absence of life is death, and cessation of motion is rest, so absence of guilt is justification”. It is, however, the experience of the pardoned sinner himself, as John Murray notes in an article on justification, “that forgiveness may loom so high in his perspective that justification is to a large extent construed in terms of remission. It is the burden of sin’s guilt that occupies his consciousness, and remission of sin so fills him with gratitude that everything else comprised in justification suffers eclipse by way of comparison.”

At the same time, care must be taken not to place so much emphasis on the doctrine of forgiveness that we forget the doctrine of the acceptance of the sinner and the doctrine of justification as a whole. It is true that some of the Reformers speak of justification as if forgiveness was the principal, or even the only, element in it. But when Calvin, for example, did so, it was because, as A A Hodge points out, “he was arguing with Romanists who taught that ‘justification consists in remission of sins and infusion of grace’”. Calvin argued in opposition that justification consists in the former but does not include the latter; consequently the former is heavily emphasised.

(6) The greatness of forgiveness.

However, while seeking to give due place to each of the components of justification, we also wish to highlight something of the greatness of forgiveness itself. The greatness of God’s forgiveness of sin is indicated by the several terms which describe it.

It is set forth in Scripture as His lifting it up, putting it away, taking it away, removing it, as is implicit in the words forgiveness, pardon and remission, and explicit in Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us”. Forgiveness of sin is also to cover it, (“Blessed is he whose sin is covered” (Ps 32:1)); to cast it away, (“Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back” (Is 38:17), and, “Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Mic 7:19)); to pass it by, (“Who passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage” (Mic 7:18)); to blot it out, (“I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions” (Is 43:25)); to cleanse it or wash it away, (“The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7)); not to impute it; (“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity” (Ps 32:2)); and not to remember it; (“Their iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb 8:12)). Great indeed must be the forgiveness which is set forth under such striking descriptions, all of which show, as Thomas Adams said, that “sins are so remitted as if they had never been committed”.

The greatness of forgiveness is also brought before us by the words which indicate the variety of the sins forgiven.

From the Hebrew we have the words: transgression (which basically indicates rebellion), iniquity (that is, perversity and depravity, or wickedness and vanity), trespasses (which speaks of wrongdoing and treacherous acts), and the term sin itself which has the basic nuance of missing the mark. In the New Testament, the same words: transgression, iniquity and trespass convey respectively the further ideas of “turning aside”, “lawlessness”, and “falling away”. Sin is also presented in Scripture by such words and phrases as uncleanness, abomination, works of darkness, works of the devil, works of the flesh, rebellion, wickedness and evil. What makes sin especially evil is that it is directed against the very being of God. How great then is the pardon which covers all manner of sin!

Some convicted sinners fear that they have committed the unpardonable sin

Some convicted sinners fear that they have committed the unpardonable sin – what John Owen calls that “remediless sin” – and that there is therefore no forgiveness for them. The Saviour speaks of it thus: “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men (Matt 12:31). Matthew Poole comments that this verse and the one which follows have “very much exercised great divines, and much more perplexed poor Christians in their fits of melancholy and under temptations”. It cannot be a sin that is committed ignorantly, he says, but must be one knowingly committed against the operations of the Holy Ghost; it must contain the ingredients of apostasy (Heb 6:6), of wilfulness in sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth (Heb 10:26), and of impenitence – because what sins we truly repent of will be forgiven (1 Jn 1:9). Poole thinks that persecution is also an ingredient in it, in view of the connection between the malice of the Pharisees and this solemn statement of the Saviour. In any case, we believe, as has often been noted, no one has committed this sin who is concerned about having committed it and still makes use of the means of grace.

We again see that forgiveness is exceedingly great because it covers the complete total of the sins of the believer.

How vast is their number! They are spoken of in Scripture as “manifold transgressions” (Amos 5:12); multiplied before God (Is 59:12); and more than the hairs of one’s head (Ps 40:12). But in forgiveness, the guilt of every sin is removed. Psalm 103 says, “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities” (v 3), and Colossians 2:13, “having forgiven you all trespasses”. “In our judicial pardon,” says John Brown, “all our sins, past, present, or future, are forgiven, in so far as they are, in any sense, transgressions of God’s law as a covenant of works.” Thus past sins are remitted and future sins will not be imputed (they will not make the believer liable to eternal punishment).

Boston’s view is similar: “All the man’s sins are pardoned together. God gives no half-pardons; it suits not either the riches of His grace, nor the sinner’s necessity. For one leak will sink the ship, and so will one unpardoned sin damn the soul.” John Kennedy thus describes the sinner’s justification: “It must secure a free, full and final remission of all his guilt – a perfect removal of all that could make him liable to death. This pardon must avail for the removal of all liability to death on account of all the sins which, in relation to the moment in which it is granted, are past, present and future . . . . All the sin which exposed him to death, or could do so at any stage of his life, must have been regarded as utterly removed ere a right to eternal life could be given. He could not be accepted unless to this extent forgiven.”

Above everything, pardon is immeasurably great as the deliverance of the soul from guilt

Above everything, pardon is immeasurably great as the deliverance of the soul from guilt – from being due to suffer the just wrath and curse of God for ever. It is a great deliverance to be rescued from the power and pollution of sin, but a greater (if we may so say) to be saved from its guilt. “The revealed doctrine of pardon cannot be understood,” says James Buchanan, “unless we distinguish the guilt and demerit of sin from its dominion and defilement. The guilt of sin remains after the act of sin is past and gone; and it is ‘marked’, or ‘retained’, against us, until it is ‘blotted out’, or ‘remitted’. The fact of sin remains a fact for ever, and can never be undone; it will be true to all eternity that we contracted guilt and deserved punishment. Pardon presupposes both its reality and its demerit, and frees us from the charge of guilt and the sentence of condemnation, without impairing our sense of either. On the contrary, as it proceeds from the cross of Christ and is proclaimed in His gospel, it deepens our deepest convictions of sin, so that we can never open our mouths any more on account of our shame, when God is pacified towards us for all that we have done.”

1. This second part continues to deal with God’s judicial forgiveness.
2. Westminster Confession of Faith 11:1.
3. The Reformed Faith – An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Inverness, 1973 reprint, p 126.
4. Exposition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, pp 177-8.
5. Systematic Theology, Edinburgh, 1985 reprint, p 624.
6. Collected Writings of John Murray, Edinburgh, 1977, vol 2, p 218.
7. Outlines of Theology, London, 1972 reprint, p 507.
8. Matthew Poole’s Commentary, Edinburgh, 1974 reprint, vol 3, p 57.
9. The Systematic Theology of John Brown of Haddington, Fearn, 2002 reprint, p 362.
10. Commentary on the Shorter Catechism, Edmonton, 1993 reprint, vol 1, p 587.
11. Man’s Relations to God, 1995 reprint, p 66.
12. The Doctrine of Justification, London, 1961 reprint, p 272.