“Son,
be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee”
The
lessons focus on two intimately related themes: the forsaking of sins and
the forgiveness of sins. Both involve a re-ordering, a re-establishing of
the interior life of the soul: the first as directed to the soul’s activity,
to what we must do; the second, to the soul itself, to who and what we are.
Forgiveness means the actual putting away of the obstacles which hinder the
soul’s true motion towards the good, towards God - it means the removal of
sin. Forsaking means the actual turning away from sin to the active loving
of the true and absolute good, God - it means the pursuit of righteousness.
The forgiveness of sins enables the forsaking of sins, the following after
righteousness through the restoration of righteousness in us.
The
forsaking of sins and the forgiveness of sins involve a motion away from sin
to righteousness. That motion of the soul is repentance. As Jeremy Taylor
writes:
Repentance, of all things in the world,
makes the greatest change: it changes things in heaven and earth; for it
changes the whole man from sin to grace, from vicious habits to holy
customs, from unchaste bodies to angelical souls, from swine to
philosophers, from drunkenness to sober counsels.
“Repentance makes the greatest change”.
It means just that - a change, a change in outlook, a metanoia, a
conversion in the sense of a turning around, a turning around because of
having been turned around. Repentance means a change of heart and a
conversion of mind. “Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind”,
writes St. Paul, exhorting the Ephesians to repentance, to the forsaking of
sins, “put off the old manhood...put on the new manhood”, “put
away....all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil
speaking...with all malice”, for “ye have not so learned Christ”.
Repentance means a radical re-ordering of the soul’s activity. But how is
this possible? How are our vicious habits to be transformed into holy
customs?
“Be
ye kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God
for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you”.
God’s
forgiveness must be active in our forgiveness. The forsaking of sins
depends radically upon the forgiveness of sins and the forgiveness of sins
is a divine act - a divine activity accomplished in the flesh of our
humanity, in the very manhood of Christ. For lest we should think that this
motion of the soul is wholly our own doing, the Collect recollects to us
that the forsaking of sins and the forgiveness of sins is an essentially
divine activity in us.
“O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee:
Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule
our hearts”.
God
alone can forgive sins, but it is man alone who must be forgiven. The two
sides meet in Jesus Christ. Forgiveness belongs to God because the
forgiveness of sins means the restoration of man into righteousness. This
cannot be accomplished by a mere forgetting of sin - the pretence that
nothing happened when, in fact, something did - but by a making right of
what was wrong, a transformation of sin into righteousness, of evil into
good.
The
gospel story anticipates the forgiveness of sins for the whole world. It
anticipates the passion of Christ. For Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of
sins. In Him, there is perfect accord between the truth of our humanity and
true divinity. Christ forgives the sins of the man sick with palsy; Christ
perceives the hidden thoughts of the Scribes; Christ heals the paralytic in
order that “ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to
forgive sins”. Forgiveness, omniscience, resuscitation anticipating
resurrection - these are all divine activities wrought by Christ in the
flesh of our humanity “that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on
earth to forgive sins”. Forgiveness on earth is through the Word made
flesh. Christ in the inmost being of his perfect human soul yields to the
will of his heavenly Father, referring all things to the divine source of
all things and all activity. He intercedes, for when he dies, he has the
whole of mankind in his heart.
The
forgiveness of sins is a divine act. It means a restoration, a
re-creation. The God who creates out of nothing, restores man out of the
nothingness of sins. He re-establishes man in righteousness. The vehicle
of this restoration is the humanity of Christ. The restoration is
accomplished in the Passion and Death of Christ.
Jesus is by his own death the forgiveness of sins; he is the
resurrection and the life through his own resurrection. We are thrown
into the life-giving sepulchre of Christ, we touch the slain and living
Christ, his body and his blood; our sins are forgiven us, and we live by
him; we arise to walk in all those good works that he has prepared for
us to walk in. (Austin Farrer, The Crown of the Year, Trinity XIX)
It
cost the heart-blood of the Son of God to obtain heaven for us. Forgiveness
ultimately means to will the true good, the good that is God himself and the
goal of man. Forgiveness is no superficial gesture. It must come from the
heart, from the heart of God into our hearts. It concerns not simply the
penalties or the consequences of sin but sin itself.
But
what is the act of forgiving in us? If you say, “I forgive you, but I can’t
forget”, then you haven’t forgiven the sin. You have merely sent away or
put away the penalty that you might have exacted, your pound of flesh, as it
were. But the original wrong isn’t made right between you. It isn’t
forgiven. Forgiveness cannot be mere words, sounds signifying nothing. Or
if you despise the one who has offended you so that it is a matter of
repugnance or a matter of indifference to have nothing further to do with
him, then you haven’t forgiven him so much as tried to forget him, to erase
him from your universe. If you say, “I will forgive, because if I don’t,
God won’t forgive me”, then you come a little closer to true
forgiveness, though standing yet a long way off. At least the common basis
of our sinful humanity is recognised - a common need, a ground of sympathy,
is acknowledged.
The forgiveness
of sins from the heart is a deeper and more profound reality. It is an
active love that seeks to restore and perfect. It is a mirroring in us of
the Divine Love that has created us and which restores us. Divine
forgiveness creates our forgiveness. It takes away all our sins and
offences by the transforming power of that active love which yielded itself
to the hard wood of the Cross. Christ is our forgiveness who at the moment
of his dying, prays “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.
“Forgiveness”, writes George MacDonald, “is not love merely, but love
conveyed as love to the erring” - love to the unlovely – “so
establishing peace with God, and forgiveness towards our neighbour”.
Forgiveness is one of the great distinctives of the Christian faith. We
cannot not speak of it. What can it mean in the face of conflict and
war, in the face of enmity and hatred? It means everything. It means an
openness to the transcendent love of God without which our lives are the
prisoners to our passions. At the very least, we have to want that peace
and reconciliation that ultimately comes from God and let it direct and rule
our hearts. It is to be recalled to the ultimate dignity of our humanity
which is found in the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. We come to him
who has given himself for us. We come to this eucharistic feast that we,
too, might know that our sins are forgiven us.
“Son, be of good cheer,
thy sins be forgiven thee”
