With God in the World: A Series of Papers

by Charles Henry Brent

Now it is just this simple, childlike transparency that the Christian must cultivate in every respect. When it so happens to a man that he may not tell his wrong-doing to the person immediately wronged, then let him go to some spiritual friend, or to his pastor, who stands as the representative of Christian society, as well as the ambassador of Christ, and share with him his grief.

The exception referred to above—where an open confession would result in social injury—does not at all alter the fact that perfect frankness alone makes fellowship possible. More often than not when one friend tells another of some piece of petty meanness by which friendship has been marred, the injured party already knows all about it. The confession is not made to give information, but to open up the soul that has sinned so that the process of healthy social life may be free to work again. It is not wholly explicable, but it is a law which governs human intercourse.

Precisely in the same way this law works in the life of fellowship with God. He knows more about our sins than we can tell Him. But by telling them over, their occasion, their guilt, before Him, the soul is new-born into His love, and the warmth of His compassion melts the emotions. This is a first requisite in genuine personal religion—frankness before God; and frankness among men is second only to it.

In requiring perfect openness of life from men God asks only what He gives. He is Light. There is no knowledge of His Person which man is capable of grasping which He does not offer. He tears open His bosom and reveals the most sacred depths of His being. He asks man to do likewise that fellowship may follow.

So far we have considered what man should do when, whether for a moment or for years, he has walked apart from God. He must review the past and in intention live it over again with God, turning his back upon everything that is amiss. But this alone is incomplete. The heart must receive some sort of assurance that the work of penitence is acceptable in God's sight. There is no thirst of the soul so consuming as the desire for pardon. A sense of its bestowal is the starting point of all goodness. It comes bringing with it, if not the freshness of innocence, yet a glow of inspiration that nerves feeble hands for hard tasks, a fire of hope that lights anew the old high ideal so that it stands before the eye in clear relief, beckoning us to make it our own. To be able to look into God's face and know with the knowledge of faith that there is nothing between the soul and Him is to experience the fullest peace the soul can know.

Whatever else pardon may be, it is above all things admission into full fellowship with God. It is not a release from certain penalties which the natural course of sin entails, though it brings with it power and wisdom to endure and to use penalties so that they become means by which lost virtues are restored and the whole character reinvigorated. The sense of fellowship comes out with singular force when for the first time the pardoned soul leaps out from under a weight of sin. The joy of prayer, the fearless approach to God, the contemplation of His personal love—all this testifies to what pardon is. The absolution of the dying robber on Calvary was not merely an admission into Christ's privileges, but a call to His fellowship and a speedy call at that—"To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise."

The first awakening of the soul to a sense of pardon makes this very vivid. But somehow as time goes on and repeated falls on the upward climb discourage the soul, the difficulty of grasping God's pardon seems to increase. Confession is made and sorrow is felt, but God's face seems hidden behind a cloud. Then is it comforting to remember that all clouds are earthborn. The trouble is that we reflect our own impatience and discouragement up into the life of God. Because we chafe under our almost imperceptible progress we imagine God does the same. His first absolutions were full and generous, but how can these later ones be so? Surely they must be grudgingly bestowed. So we argue, and the latest forgiving message of God, a message as strong and full as the first, falls upon listless ears. The absolution that comes to the penitent after the seventy-times-seven repetitions of a sin is all that the first one was. Absolution is never less than absolution. It always admits to fellowship so complete that it could not be closer.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism.

[13] H. Scott Holland.