Forgiveness – Divine and Human¹

1. Is There a Difference?

Hugh Martin

There is evidently some relation between the forgiveness which we receive from an offended God and the forgiveness we render to an offending brother. (1.) It is a relation of similarity: “Forgiving one another, even as” – in like manner as – “God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you”. Let your treatment of one who has trespassed against you be similar to – modelled upon – the treatment which God extended to you, when you had trespassed against him. (2.) It is more than a relation of similarity. It is the relation between a motive and the procedure to which it prompts: “Forgiving one another, even as” – since, seeing that, “God . . . hath forgiven you”. Let the fact that God has forgiven you move you, prompt you, persuade you, prevail upon you, to forgive your brother also.

No, (3.) it is even more than this. The connection is closer than that of mere similarity, and closer even than that of the influence of a mere motive. It is a connection of concomitance,² of intimate unfailing concomitance. Our reception of forgiveness from God is made, in a sense, to depend on our rendering forgiveness to our brethren. Not indeed that this can be regarded as compromising, or traversing, the great truth that our reception of forgiveness is suspended alone upon our faith: He that believeth is forgiven and “justified from all things”. But the harbouring of an unforgiving, vindictive disposition is inconsistent with the present and prevailing exercise of faith. The faith that really sees, appreciates and embraces the forgiveness of sins effectually purges the soul from malice, revenge and resentment.

³Quoted in Young, Aonio Paleario, vol 2, p 444.

¹Taken with editing from The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, vol 30 (1881). This article will appear in the forthcoming volume of Martin’s writing to be published, God willing, by Free Presbyterian Publications.

²That is, occurrence in connection with something else.

And where these evil passions still prevail, proof is afforded thereby that true faith is not in action, and that the soul is disqualified and disabled from apprehending and appropriating the loving forgiveness of the covenant of grace. He that shows no mercy to man sees no mercy in God. He that shows no mercy sees no mercy. The same state of heart that shows no mercy is incapable of seeing mercy. He that refuses mercy to man refuses the mercy of God. In virtue of the one same dark frame of spirit, he does both; the fact that he refuses mercy to man proves that he lacks the contrite heart which accepts mercy from God. Hence “he shall have judgement without mercy that hath showed no mercy”. With the same measure with which he metes [measures] out, it is meted to him again. “If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

But this relation between God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of our brethren has been pressed too far, especially when considered as a relation of similarity. Thus dealt with, it has been made to yield a plausible objection – perhaps the most plausible – against the doctrine of the atonement. It has been said: God requires us freely to forgive an offending brother. He requires us to do so without demanding any atonement or satisfaction for the trespass that needs forgiveness. Our forgiveness is to be apart from all execution of penalty, or punishment, or vengeance. We are to stipulate no satisfaction to our offended dignity or honour. We are to demand no sacrifice. We are not to put our brother on the task of painfully expiating his offence. Frankly, freely, fully we are to forgive him.

Are we, on our part, to be more frank, or free, or handsome in extending forgiveness than God on His part? Are we to exhibit a placability greater than we are to attribute to the Most High? Are we to imagine that He will forgive only from regard to a plenary satisfaction – that He will demand a full execution of the penalty, a propitiation of suffering and blood-shedding and death – the sacrifice of a Lamb for a burnt offering? Is not the similarity between His forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others destroyed if we think so? Or, if a true similarity is admitted, does it not disprove that doctrine of atonement which represents the God of all grace as pardoning iniquity, transgression and sin only because they have been expiated in the blood of a great and glorious victim? Thus from our being required to forgive without the intervention of an atonement, many would argue that no atonement is requisite, or intervenes, when God forgives us.

The notion pervades many minds in all ranks of life. As an objection to the fundamental doctrine of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice, it is proudly and very confidently put forward in those recent attractive but pretentious Anglic-

an productions, whose authors exhibit considerable literary abilities, combined with still greater theological ignorance. And some of them have had the senselessness and impudence to say that Calvinism is dead. It may be met with in the humbler and unlettered classes of society also.

In that beautiful book, English Hearts and English Hands,³ where the truly heroic authoress describes her Christian efforts among a very rough class of the hard-wrought children of toil, a very graphic instance occurs. Such a person is recorded as having argued against the blessed truth of reconciliation and forgiveness by the blood or atonement of Jesus. He tells that he found, after a conflict with his feelings of resentment or revenge, that he could forgive an injury without insisting on anything like sacrifice or satisfaction or compensation for the offence, and felt comfortable after doing so. And he adds, with great simplicity, “Why could not God do a handsome thing like that?” Thus the unlettered child of nature, speaking the feelings of the natural man, adopts the very argument of the graceful sons of finest literature; and puts it, we humbly think, in a more striking form than they.

But in whatever form it may be put, it amounts simply to this, that the fact of our being required to forgive without an atonement argues that we may expect no atonement will be involved in God’s forgiveness. We propose for a little to exhibit the fallacy of this notion.

1. It seems to be forgotten that this is reasoning in a circle, or perhaps rather a mere begging of the question. It is true that when brother trespasses against brother, they are required to forgive each other without the intervention of any penalty, or sacrifice, or atonement in their relation and procedure towards each other. But what if this actually presupposes an atonement? What if this mutual forgiveness is enjoined in a world under a constitution that does not and could not exist save as founded on an atonement? What if this duty could be required in this world, only because the great leading feature of God’s administration of its affairs and history is just the cross, or propitiatory sacrifice of Christ?

This is a very particular world in which we dwell, and in which we are called upon to forgive one another his trespasses. It is a very particular theatre for the moral government of God. It is utterly unlike heaven; it is utterly unlike hell. It is differenced from heaven by the presence of sin. What if it is differenced from hell, as we believe it is, only by the cross of Christ, by atonement for sin – a dispensation of forbearance and longsuffering founded on and justified by atonement in the cross? There is no sin in heaven. There is no atonement for sin in hell. Sin and atonement for sin – these together,

³By Catherine Marsh, “a story of gospel work among the ‘navvies’ who built the Crystal Palace and the railways in Sydenham”.

we believe, constitute the fundamental elements of this world’s moral state and history, and of God’s administration of His government over it. The presence of mutual offences through sin distinguishes this world from heaven. The possibility of mutual forgiveness differences it from hell. In this very particular world alone is the command given, Forgive your enemies; forgive one another his trespasses.”

Your objection runs in such terms as these: I am called on to forgive an offending brother without demanding compensation, satisfaction, or atonement: how much more may I expect that God will forgive me without making any such demand! The answer is: God does forgive you without requiring at your hands any satisfaction or atonement whatsoever – Himself providing the atoning sacrifice which justice demands. How very much more may you be called on to forgive your brother without requiring him to render satisfaction, seeing you are not called on to do as God has done – to provide for the expiation of the trespass!

In heaven there is no need of mutual forgiveness. There the inhabitants never say, I am sick. The sickness of mutual offence – of mutual estrangement, of mutual jealousy or envy – never enters there. The glance of conscious perfect truth and love meets on every side the glance of boundless responsive confidence. In hell there is no possibility of mutual forgiveness. There the sweet refreshings of relenting pity – the pleasures and the charm of generous reconciliation – never come. Endless recriminations and mutual malignity reign. According to the prophet’s awful figure in describing the destruction of Babylon, hell is moved from beneath to meet the coming of its fresh-doomed inhabitants, to give them a terribly malignant welcome to their place of woe.

But in this world – distinguished from heaven by the possibility that mutual offences may arise, and distinguished from hell by the possibility that mutual offences may be forgiven – a difference like this from all other places of the Lord’s dominions must have some deep ground to rest upon. There must be some special distinguishing element in God’s administration over it to bear out a difference so great, a character so special, a state of things so unique. It is the atonement of Christ. It is the fact that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” as a ransom and propitiation for sin. It is this that underlies the whole dispensation. In the dispensation of the fullness of times, “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law”.

In vain do we look anywhere else for anything to justify God in keeping this world in a different state from hell, when it came into a different state from heaven. Different both from heaven and hell it cannot righteously be,

under the government of a just and all-wise God, save for the sake of Christ’s cross alone, and with a view to that dispensation of forbearance and forgiveness under which, for the sake of Christ’s cross, this world is placed. Yet with this very difference of the world’s state, both from the realms of the blessed and the abodes of the lost, the command to forgive one another – the possibility of our forgiving – is bound up. There would be no scope for such mutual acts of forgiveness if this world was altogether akin to heaven, and no possibility of such forgiveness if it was altogether akin to hell.

But strayed from heaven as this sinful world is, and yet not merged in hell; different from heaven in that offences may arise, different from hell in that offences may be forgiven; kept apart from heaven by the intervention of sin, kept apart from hell by the intervention of an atonement for sin. These things being so, can any reasoning be more pitifully helpless than that which attempts to show that, as our forgiveness of each other is to be without atonement demanded on our part, none has been required on God’s part? That whole constitution of things, in virtue of which mutual forgiveness may have a place in this world at all, rests ultimately on the truth of that atonement against which such strange pleas are made to overthrow it.