FORGIVENESS! God is its blessed source. The man, Christ Jesus, its divinely appointed channel. All manner of sin and blasphemy indicates its extent. The unerring Word of God is its assurance, and every poor guilty sinner under the wide canopy of heaven may be, if he will, its subject.
“Why, and how is it,” you exclaim, “that I am not in possession of it?”
It may be that you have up to now been following David’s example in keeping silence. That is, not telling God the truth about yourself.
If so, let me entreat you to follow his example when he says “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.” He adds, “I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.” And it shall be true of you — as it was of him―without a moment’s delay,
Without any Ifs or Buts.
“Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” (See Psalm 32).
An incident culled from a friend’s letter will serve as an illustration of this. It runs as follows:—
“Just as we were leaving Oxford, a gentleman, whom I had met before, got into the same compartment.
“We had previously conversed on eternal realities, but the only effect produced upon him was a determination to resist the truth, saying: ‘He did not wish to have his mind disturbed.’
“I longed to embrace this opportunity of again presenting to him the grand truths of pardon, peace, and eternal life through, and in, Christ.
“Whilst we were conversing together, he showed me a letter he had received from his son in America; and in order that I might understand its meaning he explained that his son, when quite a lad, was discovered robbing a shopkeeper’s till.
“The owner was told of the theft, and, upon examination, it came out that the boy had stolen a pound.
“In terror as to the consequences of his act, he immediately left home and friends, and fled the country.
“Years rolled by, and the prodigal was still a wanderer from his father’s house.
“One morning the postman brought the letter I now hold in my hand. It told of the deep sorrow of the young man for the past act, and was full of contrition. The letter concluded by the writer subscribing himself, ‘Your repenting son.’
“The father wept at the acknowledgment of his son’s guilt, and, with the impulse of a love he had ever borne to the boy, hastened to telegraph a reply.
“The telegram contained one word only.
“I was asked to guess what the word was, but on my failing to do so, he told me it was the word-
“Forgiven.”
“ ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘what an illustration this affords of the way God receives a sinner!’
“I there and then besought him to take the place before God which his son had taken before him, confessing his guilt, and owning his sin, assuring him that if he did so the telegram from heaven would be the word— ‘Forgiven’.”
Will you do so, my reader?
If you plead “guilty,” and own yourself to be what God knows you to be, it is of the deepest importance to your soul’s peace that you should understand the channel through which the forgiveness of sins flows to you. God is the source; Christ the channel, through which the river of forgiving love reaches the heart-broken, conscience-stricken, repentant sinner.
“Through this Man is preached unto you
The Forgiveness of Sins:
and by Him all that believe are justified from all things.” (Acts 13:38, 39).
Repentance, prayers, hopes, fears, doings and strivings, reformations and resolutions, are not the divinely-appointed channel through which forgiveness flows to a guilty sinner.
Ask that captain how he will get his ship, laden with bales, to Manchester. He will tell you there is only one way — a channel has been made connecting the mighty ocean with that city, and it would be an impossible, as well as an insane act to attempt to convey the heavily-laden vessel overland. The ship canal — waterway, the suited and only way for a ship to travel — is provided.
So to attempt to obtain forgiveness by any other means, or through any other channel than the blood-bought, new, and living way opened at Calvary’s Cross — is an act of the maddest folly, “for
There is None Other Name
under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
Let me add one scripture as to the ground of forgiveness. This we find in Romans 3:25: “God hath set forth a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness; that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” Also, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5:1.)