But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Mt. vi. 14, 15). The parable of the Great Debtor (Mt. xviii. 21–35) is designed to teach the duty of a full and free human forgiveness by reference to the example of the divine forgiveness. Not "until seven times" only, but "until seventy times seven"; that is, freely, largely, liberally, must we forgive the penitent offender. Why? Because it is so that God forgives, and because we cannot be forgiven by him unless we possess this forgiving spirit. But these two reasons blend into one. God can receive to his favor only those who aspire and strive to be like himself. The cruel and revengeful are not forgivable; only the merciful obtain mercy at his hands.

But the most striking picture of the divine forgiveness is contained in the parable of the Lost Son. The eager waiting of the father for the first sign of penitence, the anticipation of the son's return by the paternal compassion, the rapturous welcome, the merriment and feasting— these are the outlines of the picture of the forgiving love of God. Now the question arises: What idea as to the nature of forgiveness most naturally emerges from these various comparisons and illustrations? It is plain, in the first place, that God forgives as a Father. Jesus speaks almost uniformly of forgiveness in connection with his teaching about God's fatherhood and man's true sonship to him. It is a question on what terms and conditions "your Father" can forgive you. It is a question about men's being like their Father in forgiving love. And when Jesus wishes to illustrate at once the nature of sin and of recovery from it, he pictures an unfilial life from which the wandering son is restored by paternal love to his normal relations in the home of his father.

It appears, then, alike from the descriptions of human. forgiveness and from the allusions to its divine model, that forgiveness is a restoration of personal relations, a reconstitution of impaired or sundered ties. Among men it is a becoming reconciled to one's brother man - or, at least, a prominent factor in effecting such a reconciliation.

Similarly, in God, it is the reception of sinful man into his favor and fellowship. It is the Father's welcome of a disobedient, but now repentant son; the admission of him to his normal place in the home, an admission as complete as if he had never wandered away. In such ways did Jesus describe God's forgiveness. It is viewed as a paternal act, taking its character and significance from the fatherly relation of God to man. Jesus made no use of legal analogies to illustrate its nature; the conception of debt and its remission which he employed, alternates with such terms as trespasses and sins, and is obviously figurative. Of the official and almost impersonal relations of the law court and of the abstraction called the divine law or government, he made no use. So far as we can judge, these conceptions had no place in his thoughts. Is it desirable that we should supplement his mode of representing the subject by terms of a more legal and official cast? The traditional theology has done even more than this: it has supplanted Jesus' intensely personal descriptions of forgiveness with an apparatus of judicial processes, -balances, equivalences, imputations, and fiats, and often has not hesitated to disparage the favorite analogy of Jesus for describing the subject as inadequate and defective at the most crucial point. To my mind, however, while other analogies, such as the relations involved in a suit at law, or in a financial transaction, may be especially useful for illustrating particular aspects of the subject, they should be held subordinate to our Lord's mode of viewing and describing forgiveness. Nor do I believe that, rightly estimated, the New Testament yields any conception of the matter which differs essentially from his distinctly ethical and personal view of it. At any rate, the conception of forgiveness as the restoration between spirits essentially kindred, of normal personal relations, is the specifically Christian view.

But the greatest deficiency which theology has found in the teaching of Jesus about forgiveness is that he does not recognize the existence of any obstacle to forgiveness in God which requires to be removed by a propitiation before

he can exercise forgiving grace. It is this fact, as we have seen, which has led some theologians to deny that there is any gospel in the teaching of Jesus, and to see in it only a kind of prelude to the ampler truth of subsequent reflection. Our Lord is very explicit, however, in stating that there are conditions of forgiveness on man's side. The offender must sincerely repent, that is, he must realize and acknowledge his fault, must condemn and repudiate it. This he obviously could not do unless he saw and preferred the right, the good, and the true with which his evil acts and choices stand in contrast. He must in some real way break with the evil of which he would be forgiven, and in aspiration and preference identify himself with the good. If he would have God receive him, he must come to God; if he would live his true life as a son of God, he must forsake the far country of sin and return to his home and his Father. And one who thus dares to hope in God's mercy toward his own offences will, as a matter of course, be charitable toward those who have offended against himself. If in reconciliation with God we must come over to his side make his character our goal and standardthen, of course, we must be merciful as he is merciful; to be unforgiving would be to deny the very meaning of the forgiveness which we desire for ourselves, because we can be forgiven only when we choose and aspire to be Godlike. Such are the conditions of forgiveness in the teaching of Jesus, and besides them he recognizes no other.

This same conception of forgiveness, according to the Book of Acts, underlay the earliest apostolic preaching. The principal references to the subject are as follows: Peter calls upon his fellow-Jews to repent and be baptized to the end of receiving the remission of sins (Acts ii. 38). Again he declares that God has exalted Christ to his right hand to bestow repentance and remission of sins (Acts v. 31). He counsels Simon Magus to repent of the wicked thought of his heart if perhaps it may be forgiven him (Acts viii. 22). Paul declares that through the man Jesus is proclaimed to the Jews remission of

sins and a justification unattainable by the law (Acts xiii. 38, 39), and that he has been commissioned to go to the Gentiles bearing the gospel of repentance and remission (Acts xxvi. 18, 20). Unless we supplement these references liberally from other sources, we can find here only the idea of a free forgiveness, available through Christ, an echo of his word that he had come to seek and to save the lost.

For Paul "justification" and "forgiveness" are synonymous terms. He illustrates the reckoning of the believer's faith to him for righteousness by quoting the Psalmist's words: "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered" (Rom. iv. 7). Only in the later epistles, however, in which the Jewish category of justification no longer appears, do we find a direct use made of the term "forgiveness." Here the apostle teaches that God has graciously blessed us (èxapíoaтo; Eng. vss. "hath forgiven," "forgave ") in, or through, Christ (èv XpIoT),1 and declares that through his blood we have our redemption, that is, the forgiveness of our sins (Eph. i. 7; Col. i. 14); that from the spiritual death of sin believers have been quickened into new life with Christ, receiving the forgiveness of all their trespasses (Col. ii. 13). It will be noticed that the idea of forgiveness here stands in the closest connection with those thoughts which the apostle is fond of expressing by the phrase "in Christ." In Christ God has forgiven us, that is, in union with him, in the fellowship of his life; we have received our forgiveness in and with the bestowment of a new life in Christ. This conception of dying to sin and rising to newness of life with Christ is quite as characteristic of Paul's thought as the idea of justification, and far more pervading in his writings. In his polemic against a Judaizing theology he naturally uses, by preference, the terms whose import and explanation were in dispute, but in the more positive and independent development of his own conception of salvation he chiefly employs biological, rather than legal, 1 Eph. iv. 32; cf. Col. iii. 13.

2

2 Cf. my Theology of the New Testament, pp. 423-430.

analogies. Here salvation is conceived as a vital process, rather than as a formal acquittal or decree of exemption from penalty. We shall pursue this matter further when we come to consider the Pauline idea of salvation by union with Christ.

From this résumé of the New Testament references to the subject I am led to conclude that the two most characteristic notes in the Christian doctrine of forgiveness are these (1) it is a paternal act the restoration of one who is by right a son, to normal relations with his heavenly Father; and (2) it is an experience which is involved in our entrance into life-fellowship with Christ and the realization of a new hope and a new life in him. How far is forgiveness, then, from having the character of a mere court-verdict, a pronouncement or decree! As well conceive that a human father's recovery and restoration of an unfilial son to his right relations with himself were some such legal formality. It is rather a triumph of love, a victory of influence, an achievement in the world of personal relations.

The first of these two ideas just mentioned is the keynote of our Lord's teaching on the subject; the second is the keynote of Paul's thought. They are perfectly accordant, belonging, as they both do, to the sphere of moral realities and relations. The latter is but a pro

duction or elaboration of the former. Since Christ has shown us the way to the Father, it is in fellowship with him that we come to God. Since he alone has realized the life of perfect sonship to God, it is through him alone that we can recover our own impaired sonship. The two ideas meet in the truth of Christ's mediation. He reveals at once the Father whose forgiveness we need, and assures us of his readiness to receive us, and, also, quickens in ust the sense of sin and the impulse to repentance. He gives repentance that he may procure us remission. In fellowship with him we see our unlikeness to God, yet he enables us to hope in a possible likeness to him. Yes, forgiveness is an act of fatherly compassion, and it is in the company of Christ that we come to its secure realization.