Bible Commentaries

The Relation of Severity to Pardon

Psalm 99:8

I. There is a great confusion of thought on the subject of retribution. It is supposed that when a man suffers for his fault it indicates that God is angry with him. The notion is that God may forgive him after suffering his penalty, but that the receiving of the penalty implies Divine displeasure. The Psalmist's view is just the opposite. He says that in dealing with His people God forgave first and punished afterwards. "Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their doings." The idea seems to be that when God forgives a Psalm 99:8

Pardon and retribution are ever united: they spring from one source of holy love, and they ought to become to us the occasions of solemn and thankful praise.

I. Forgiveness Psalm 99:8

Mercy and judgment must be harmonized. A magnanimous pardon worthy of God's Fatherhood and a scrupulous honour for law worthy of the Judge of all worlds, must meet together in God's providential government. We sometimes assume that forgiveness and judgment exclude each other, and that the climax of clemency is to release from pain rather than to produce sympathy with righteousness. But that is unscriptural and untrue. The forgiven suffer sometimes even beyond the average lot of their fellows. Many reasons can be assigned for this intimate association between judgment and forgiveness.

I. God joins pardon with impressive correction to guard us against mean utilitarian views of grace, and to train us into a true appreciation of the inwardness of His saving work. In the beginning of a soul's return to God it is often moved by selfish, superficial fear. The unhappy effects that follow after sin stir up loathing, trepidation, mental distress, outward amendment and prayer. But these initial motives are intended to be temporary and transitional only, and that man has not tasted the deepest secret of forgiveness who looks upon the grace as mere security against the portentous suffering in which the Divine wrath manifests itself.

II. Our surviving imperfections require that the forgiveness of the past shall be associated with a rigid judgment of its lapses. The fact that we look upon our oft-repeated delinquencies as trivial in their import shows that we need an admonitory discipline of sternness as well as a generous and compassionate absolution. Again and again are we tempted to a presumption which would pervert the grace of God. And the more closely God takes us to His favour and friendship the more urgent is the necessity for the providential lesson.

III. This union of judgment and mercy in the Divine dealings with us is designed to show that the law of retributive righteousness never ceases to operate in our lives. It is immanent as God Himself, for the law is the form assumed by His personal activity. Our deceitful hearts tempt us to imagine that the government which frees us from condemnation must be weak, shifty, vacillating in its foundation principles. In the dawning hours of our release from fear moods arise when we incline to think that grace is some clever surreptitious process to disburden us from our bonds and obligations, and following upon that we fall into an unconfessed and inarticulate antinomianism.

IV. This association of judgment and mercy makes the public declaration of Divine forgiveness possible. Escape must not be too easy for the man who is liable to fall away and repeat his offences. As private citizens even we can hold no relation with the man who seeks to shirk the just pain and penalty of his transgression. We might be suspected of condoning delinquencies, and when those delinquencies are felonious, to do so might carry with it serious consequences.

V. These chastisements are intended to illuminate the character of God, and to give an assuring insight into the dispositions of those upon whom they fall. Although infinite love associates itself with infinite holiness, that holiness is exacting to the last degree. It is no light thing to come short of Divine glory. Not only does the Divine government compel a judicial reckoning with the lapses of God's people, but something in the Divine character likewise insists upon it. He who experiences no inward quickening cannot be absolved from condemnation, and to that inward quickening temporal chastisements are contributory.

—T. G. Selby, The God of the Frail, p54.

References.—XCIX:8.—Expositor (1Series), vol. ix. p150. XCIX.—International Critical Commentary, vol. ii. p308. C2.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p9. C5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No1265. C.—International Critical Commentary, vol. ii. p310. CI:1.—H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. ii. p107.