Salvation and Godly Rule

Forgiveness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Forgiveness

Genre: Speech

Track: 40

Dictation Name: RR136V40

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for the blessings of the week past. We thank thee that, day by day, thou dost surround us with thy grace and mercy, and thou dost give us showers of blessings, and so, our Father, in gratitude, in joy and in thanksgiving, we come into thy presence to praise thee as we ought, to delight ourselves in thy word, and to rejoice in thy service. Strengthen us by thy word and by thy spirit, that we may do that which is pleasing and acceptable in thy sight. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture lesson is from the Gospel According to St. Matthew 6:9-15, and our subject: Forgiveness. “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

We have, in recent weeks, considered the significance of the fact that, in the Lord’s Prayer, our savior said, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” The reference was to the Jubilee of God. We saw also the significance of the forgiveness of sins, what it means to be the forgiver and the forgiven. This morning, our concern is with forgiveness as such, and a very important word here used: trespasses. When our Lord uses that word trespasses, as we shall see, in effect he throws a curve ball at all of us, guaranteed to get by our self-righteousness and strike at that. It’s a very important word for us to understand.

In paganism and in modern humanism, forgiveness is simply an emotional thing. It’s an emotional change of mind. It is not related to law. The terms of forgiveness in non-0Christian religions are always determined by man, not by God. Forgiveness and the refusal to forgive are alike lawless in the modern world, but in all sin, it is God who is primarily offended, and forgiveness must be granted or withheld in terms of God and his law.

Biblically speaking, there are two kinds of forgiveness. First of all, the word forgiveness can mean cancellation of charges and debts because satisfaction has been rendered, or charges dropped because satisfaction has been rendered. If you owe someone money, when you pay off the debt, the debt is cancelled. It is nullified by your payment so there is no longer a charge, a note, against you. If there are charges against you in court and you render satisfaction, the charges are nullified.

The other meaning of forgiveness is the temporary suspension or deferment of the charges or, occasionally of the offense. We have one such usage in the Bible, when our Father was appealed to by our Lord from the cross. “Father, forgive them,” defer the charges for the time being, “for they know not what they do.” Moreover, forgiveness is of two kinds. There is theological forgiveness, the forgiveness by God of our sins. Then, there is civil forgiveness, that which belongs in human relationships. Now, civil forgiveness can be extended to people to whom no theological forgiveness is extended. Thus, in terms of biblical law as we have seen before, if a man steals $100, he is required to restore the $100 plus another $100 as a fine. The restitution can be, as we have seen, up to fourfold or fivefold. When that restitution is made, there is civil forgiveness. The charges are dropped. In terms of biblical law, the man is a citizen in good standing.

Now, theological forgiveness is where, of course, our Lord forgives us our sins. The two are related. For there to be theological forgiveness, there must be civil forgiveness or restitution. This, of course, presented a very serious problem for the early church and it should for the church today, and it’s a sign of the church’s delinquency that it does not. Because, of course, in the early church, there were people who had committed offenses which, according to civil law, required restitution and/or death, and the state, being degenerate, Rome, was not requiring those penalties. The church, therefore, had to impose penalties. Thus, in the early church, we have it from decisions of various church councils, for example, the one council in the year 300 which went into a great many such decisions, a woman who secured an abortion, could on repentance, indeed be regarded again as a Christian and be assured of God’s salvation, but she could not, to her dying day, partake of communion. She was judicially dead. She could come and worship. She could be considered a Christian sister, a friend, but she was dead in the sight of the church, in that, while the state had not sentenced her for murder, a sentence by the church indicated that she had committed a capital offense and therefore, she had to be separated from the communion to indicate that, while she was indeed saved by her repentance, she was not one of the living in the eyes of the church. This was the kind of thing the church did to make clear that while the state was delinquent, the church could not be.

We have seen that there are two meanings to the word forgiveness, cancellation of charges or debts because satisfaction has been rendered, or charges deferred for the time being, that there is theological and civil forgiveness. We must then recognize that forgiveness in the full sense of the word is a key to God’s order, both religious and civil. There can be no social order without a healthy view of forgiveness, and when the biblical idea of forgiveness begins to depart, a society is in considerable confusion.

It is very interesting that in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, a very liberal and modernistic work, one writer gives full recognition of the meaning of forgiveness. Crombeck{?} writes, “Forgiveness is the removal of the barriers between God and man. Sin is covered, expiated, it is sent away, removed, wiped out. God has cast it behind his back or into the depths of the sea. Forgiveness renews fellowship with God who is the source of all holiness and light. His mercy and favor replaces wrath and judgment so that the entire environment of human life has new possibilities. The created world is sanctified to man again, and new relationships become possible in community and family. Terror of conscience and dread of judgment give way to peace. Man’s soul is healed, the powers of his personality restored and strengthened.”

Crombeck{?} then points out that there are three aspects to this forgiveness. There is the sovereign grace of God, first of all, who is not obliged to forgive but does. There is second sacrifice, the sacrifices of the Old Testament and then the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and third, there is our repentance. Forgiveness is thus a legal fact. In forgiveness, men realize the charges against them and they assent to that challenge. The tragic fact is today, that not only do we not have a healthy perspective of forgiveness, but that the question has been turned upside down. For the past seventy five to a hundred years, as humanistic man has {?} the issue of forgiveness it has not been Does God forgive man and how? But Does man forgive God? And this has been stated over and over again.

William Archer{?} a prominent literary critic, dramatic critic, declared during World War 1, that it was impossible in view of such horrors of the war for man ever to forgive God. He had nothing to say about the sin of man. Thomas Hardy, who lived about the same time and earlier, spent his life writing novels which were designed to prove that God could not be forgiven, that God loaded the dice, stopped the debt against man. It is interesting that in my day a required reading in all high schools was Hardy’s book Tess of D’Urbervilles. No doubt, many of you read it. Like other Hardy things, it’s been made into a movie, again and again.

The whole thesis of Tess of D’Urbervilles is, here is a poor, innocent, and everything in the universe, precisely because she is innocent, is designed to subvert and destroy her. In his poetry, Hardy made his point all the more emphatic. He made it clear that the universe was stupid and senseless, and that if God existed he was most certainly an idiot, and he put it in stronger language than that, and the one sure thing was that man could not forgive whatever God might be.

The whole idea, of course, in humanism is that man is moral and God is immoral, and moral man, filled with a passion of righteousness, confronts God and condemns him. Hardy could not forgive God. He wanted no part of a God who made it possible for him to suffer. It is interesting to me, incidentally, I have a book in my library I don’t know where it is since I’ve moved, but one of these days I’ll encounter it, which I ran across some years when I was shopping for the Foundation, buying a library, and there was an autographed copy of a very devout, evangelical book of devotions, autographed by Hardy, in his library, but he’d autographed it to make it clear to anyone who inspected his library when he died that it wasn’t his idea to buy it. It was his wife’s, so he didn’t want anyone to think that he was sneaking around to God after telling everyone that he couldn’t forgive God.

What humanists like Hardy say is that man is the offended one who needs to forgive rather than to be forgiven, and they will not forgive God, but of course, it is God who is the offended one. He forgives and judges man. There are limits to that forgiveness and we are called upon as Christians to recognize God’s limits. Turning again to Crombeck{?} because here is a modernist who’s been very honest with interpretation of scripture. Crombeck{?} writes, “That Jesus understood his work as the act of God is shown also by his words. Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. Mark 3:29. The words are his response to the scribes who asserted that his exorcism of demons was a manifestation of Satanic power, that sin is unforgiveable, not because it is too shocking a harness{?} for God to forgive, but because it labels as diabolical the deed by which God acts in his anointed service. This is the {?} of theology in the name of piety to reject the approach of the merciful God.” Scripture makes it emphatic that there are limitations to prayer and to forgiveness.

Thus, in one of the great declarations of the power of prayer, St. John also defines its limits, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” Now, prayer and forgiveness have identical {?} and this is why they are closely linked here. God, we are assured answers prayer, the prayer condition is that we pray according to his will. If a fellow believer sins, the Christian must ask, that is, it is his duty to pray for his restoration. The word there in the Greek is mandator. He must pray, but he shall not pray, again mandator, if it a sin unto death. If the man has deliberately subverted all moral order in his judgments.

Now, it is important then to understand the limits of forgiveness as well as its extent. Sin has both social and religious consequences, and this is why when the Bible deals with forgiveness, it requires restitution in civil societies, between person and person, and it requires restitution in relationship to God. The restitution in respect to God, is made by Jesus Christ, but we are not thereby given the privilege of overlooking the restitution to man.

Thus, restitution is central. It tells us that social effects are inescapable in sin. There must, therefore, be social penalties and when there are social penalties, there is also social stability. It is in a society where you have restitution, that you can have stability, for forgiveness then is something more than an emotional word, but a reality.

Therefore, the commandment in the prayer, and the petition, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” As we saw over a month ago, the word debt has reference to the Jubilee. It takes in everything. It takes in sins. It takes in trespasses. It takes in the fact of spiritual bondage. It takes in every spiritual defect. But then our Lord, after giving the model prayer, goes on to say, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” He was talking to Jews and Galileans, Israelites who knew very well the laws of restitution. He didn’t have to go into that with them. They knew what he meant when he talked about debt, but he used a word which is translated as trespasses, which was very significant, paratoma. What does this mean?

Very literally, according to Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament words, it means, “Primarily a false step, a blunder, literally a fall beside, You {?} denotes a trespass, a deviation from uprightness and truth.” Now, here we come to an extremely important point. Here is the {?}. Here is the problem. It is in this area where we all offend regularly. For most of us, it is not some flagrant sin where restitution is required that is our problem. We don’t go around stealing or committing adultery, or killing, or bearing false witness very often. But we do trespass. We do things which manifest stupidity, thoughtlessness, pride, selfishness, and this is where the real problem in human relationships enters in. We’re all aware of all the frailties and the faults of people round about. Of course, the problem is to understand how anyone can ever be offended with anyone as loveable, as thoughtful, as noble, as kind, as true, as wonderful, and as wonderful as we ourselves are, but somehow, people sometimes seem to feel that we’re out of line, very hard for us to understand, very easy for us to see in others. Now, this is what our Lord was talking about when he used the word trespasses. It’s not quite a sin in that it isn’t an actual act of sin, but it does reveal an element of sin to us. It is a trespass.

Our trespasses are most offensive to others and least discernable for ourselves, and we are regularly surrounded by the trespasses of people which we cannot accuse of having violated God’s law, but trespasses are not out and out violations of God’s law, but they definitely have, behind them, thoughtlessness, and sin, and stupidity. Now, what our Lord does is to zero in on this, in no uncertain terms, very significantly. He knew us. He knew, St. John tells us, what was in man, and so he says, “If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Now that’s very plain, very blunt, and this is where Christians, by and large, fall flat on their faces. Forgiving one another trespasses. Now our Lord says God is not going to forgive your trespasses unless you forgive the trespasses of others. It’s that clear. God says I’ll take care of the sins. Most of the time, the sins are not against you. They’re secondarily against you. They’re primarily against me. The church, the state need to take care of sins, but the trespasses are what you are to deal with, and here is where your faith will reveal itself.

Most the ways in which we irritate one another, most of the problems between husband and wife are not sins, but trespasses, and the test whereby God forgives us is have we forgiven others their trespasses? If not, we are not forgiven. There’s no evasion there, no way of getting around it and saying, “Well, I’ve got a right to be angry and unforgiving about these trespasses. If you only knew, God, how much I have to put up with this and that in the other person.” But God said, “Forgive, or you are not forgiven.” You see, just as in marriage and in a family, so in the family of God, people regularly grate in one other with their set and determined ways. These are minor, but they are very real faults, but where love abounds, it does indeed, as St. Peter said in 1 Peter 4:8, “Cover a multitude of sins.”

Solomon in the Old Testament made the same point in Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirreth up strife, but love covereth all sins.” What they were talking about was precisely this area. If we are exploiting the sins or trespasses of others and dwelling on them endlessly, it means clearly that our attitude is sinful also, and that our sin as a hatred of a fellow believer and a desire to stir up strife, God forgives as we forgive the trespasses of others. This poses a question for us. Are we unforgiven by God because are unforgiving? Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy has, in Jesus Christ, cancelled the charges against us and made us new creatures in him. We give thanks unto thee that thy grace has been manifested in and to us, and we pray, our Father, that we may manifest this same grace one towards another, forgiving one another our trespasses, that thou mightest ever be forgiving of us. Take away, oh Lord, our pride, our stiffness, our stubbornness of heart, and give us thy grace that we may manifest thy love as it has been manifested unto us. Bless us to this purpose, we beseech thee. In Jesus name. Amen.

We have just a few minutes for questions. Are there any questions, first of all, on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Does the forgiveness have to be active in terms of verbal {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, sometimes it has to be verbal. It doesn’t always have to be. No. It can be an attitude of grace and love, overlooking. If husbands and wives formally ask forgiveness every time they rubbed each other the wrong way, they’d be saying, “Please forgive me,” all day long. So it doesn’t always have to be verbal, you see, but it has to be active and sometimes verbal. Yes?

[Audience] When is the best time to try to give the word such as debt {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the question is why is it that in many churches the word trespasses is substituted for debt. The answer for that is that because of these last two verses, in many churches they have assumed that debt is too difficult to understand, or they haven’t felt the word conveyed very much to the people, and it doesn’t because people are not taught that the meaning of the Jubilee, and if they’re not taught the meaning of the Jubilee, then the word very definitely doesn’t mean much. So, from time to time, there has been an effort to change it to “sins,” which again is restrictive, or to trespasses, which limits it to one kind of forgiveness. So, our Lord used the right word, “debtors,” and then he specified trespasses because this is the area where we’re most likely to look the other way, and he wanted us to get the point. Yes?

[Audience] Isn’t it true that the true believer {?} cannot blaspheme the Holy Spirit?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The true believer will not blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. He will not call God evil. Now sometimes he may be very unhappy and rail against what God has done to him, and feel his lot is not the best, but that is different. Are there any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] Is forgiveness necessary for {?} request?

[Rushdoony] Forgiveness is necessary even if it is not requested because if it is just in answer to a request, why then, it means that it is, in a sense, required, compelled. Now, the aspect of restitution can be compelled where it is a civil matter. If someone has indeed robbed or defrauded someone or, by accident destroyed their property, then the civil government has a responsibility under God’s law to require restitution. Civil forgiveness, thus, has to be mandatory in any healthy society, but in the personal area, it’s different. It has to come from the heart, see, but the civil can be required. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, the Bible gives us the example. Our Lord cast out demons and healed men, caused the blind to see and so on, and they said that this was done through Satanic power. In other words, they refused to admit that he was of God, and they said he was of Satan. So they saw the supreme good incarnate and called it supremely evil. Now this is totally subverting the whole moral order and when one does that deliberately, they are beyond forgiveness. They have made evil good and good evil.

Our time is just about up. I’d like to remind you that there are notices on the lectern in the back of the Christmas Festival which is this Saturday, so please plan to be there at 6:00 for our annual Christmas Festival. All proceeds will go to the Chalcedon publication fund, and the Guild has a great many things planned, baked goods, books, gold and silver coins, jewelry, handcrafts, gifts, white elephants, some handiwork by women, and a great deal more, and I shall give the Christmas message later on in the evening. We urge you to come out and to bring others to our annual Christmas Festival this Saturday at the Carillon Room Glendale Federal Savings. The entrance is in the back, and you take the elevator to the Carillon Room in the basement. There is a parking garage next door. Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape