Micah 7:18—“Who is a God like into thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?” Ps. 130:4—“But there is forgiveness with thee, That thou mayst be feared.” It is hard for us to understand God's feeling toward sin. Forgiveness seems easy to us, largely because we are indifferent toward sin. But to the holy One, to whom sin is the abominable thing which he hates, forgiveness involves a fundamental change of relation, and nothing but Christ's taking the penalty of sin upon him can make it possible. B. Fay Mills: “A tender spirited follower of Jesus Christ said to me, not long ago, that it had taken him twelve years to forgive an injury that had been committed against him.”How much harder for God to forgive, since he can never become indifferent to the nature of the transgression!
(c) In an earthly tribunal, there is no acquittal for those who are proved to be transgressors,—for such there is only conviction and punishment. But in God's government there is remission of punishment for believers, even though they are confessedly offenders; and, in justification, God declares this remission.
There is no forgiveness in nature. F. W. Robertson preached this. But he ignored the vis medicatrix of the gospel, in which forgiveness is offered to all. The natural conscience says: “I must pay my debt.” But the believer finds that “Jesus paid it all.”Illustrate by the poor man, who on coming to pay his mortgage finds that the owner at death had ordered it to be burned, so that now there is nothing to pay. Ps. 34:22—“Jehovah redeemeth the soul of his servants, And none of them that take refuge in him shall be condemned.”
A child disobeys his father and breaks his arm. His sin involves two penalties, the alienation from his father and the broken arm. The father, on repentance, may forgive his child. The personal relation is re-established, but the broken bone is not therefore at once reknit. The father's forgiveness, however, will assure the father's help toward complete healing. So justification does not ensure the immediate removal of all the natural consequences of our sins. It does ensure present reconciliation and future perfection. Clarke, Christian Theology, 364—“Justification is not equivalent to acquittal, for acquittal declares that the man has not done wrong. Justification is rather the acceptance of a man, on sufficient grounds, although he has done wrong.” As the Plymouth Brethren say: “It is not the sin-question, but the Son-question.” “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 10:17). The father did not allow the prodigal to complete the confession he had prepared to make, but interrupted him, and dwelt only upon his return home (Luke 15:22).
(d) The declaration that the sinner is no longer exposed to the penalty of law, has its ground, not in any satisfaction of the law's demand on the part of the sinner himself, but solely in the bearing of the penalty by Christ, to whom the sinner is united by faith. Justification, in its first element, is therefore that act by which God, for the sake of Christ, acquits the transgressor and suffers him to go free.
Acts 13:38, 39—“Be it known unto you therefore, brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins: and by him [lit.: ‘in him’] every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”; Rom. 3:24, 26—“being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus”; 1 Cor. 6:11—“but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus”; Eph. 1:7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”
This acquittal is not to be conceived of as the sovereign act of a Governor, but rather as a judicial procedure. Christ secures a new trial for those already condemned—a trial [pg 856]in which he appears for the guilty, and sets over against their sin his own righteousness, or rather shows them to be righteous in him. C. H. M.: “When Balak seeks to curse the seed of Abraham, it is said of Jehovah: ‘He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel’ (Num. 23:21). When Satan stands forth to rebuke Joshua, the word is: ‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan ... is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ (Zech. 3:2). Thus he ever puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them. ‘Touch not mine anointed ones,’ he says, ‘and do my prophets no harm’ (Ps. 105:15). ‘It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?’ (Rom. 8:33, 34).” It is not sin, then, that condemns,—it is the failure to ask pardon for sin, through Christ. Illustrate by the ring presented by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Essex. Queen Elizabeth did not forgive the penitent Countess of Nottingham for withholding the ring of Essex which would have purchased his pardon. She shook the dying woman and cursed her, even while she was imploring forgiveness. There is no such failure of mercy in God's administration.
Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology, 4:698—“The peculiar characteristic of Christian experience is the forgiveness of sins, or reconciliation—a forgiveness which is conceived as an unmerited gift of God, which is bestowed on man independently of his own moral worthiness. Other religions have some measure of revelation, but Christianity alone has the clear revelation of this forgiveness, and this is accepted by faith. And forgiveness leads to a better ethics than any religion of works can show.”
B. Restoration to favor.
(a) Justification is more than remission or acquittal. These would leave the sinner simply in the position of a discharged criminal,—law requires a positive righteousness also. Besides deliverance from punishment, justification implies God's treatment of the sinner as if he were, and had been, personally righteous. The justified person receives not only remission of penalty, but the rewards promised to obedience.