Second Sunday in Lent, March 19, 1848.
Matthew VI. 12.
Forgive Us Our Debts, As We Forgive Our Debtors.
We should be sorry, I think, to lose the word ‘Trespasses,’ which we use in our ordinary repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, and which is translated, no doubt, from the word ἁμαρτίας in St. Luke. Yet St. Matthew’s expression presents a more distinct image to the mind; it interprets itself more easily. Therefore I have chosen it this afternoon, not wishing you to consider it alone, but believing that it may help us to a clearer apprehension of a word which for many, at least, has lost its brightness through continual attrition. The idea which the petition embodies, results, I suspect, from the union of that which is peculiar in each of these forms. We find it so generally, when we take the pains to examine different expressions evidently answering to each other, or different reports of the same transaction in the Gospels. From the comparison of them there proceeds a fuller and more profound meaning than we could have obtained from either separately. What is called the study of parallel passages, may in this way be really profitable; it is often made into a very childish exercise, one which involves no reflection; sacred words being turned into an irreverent game; all sense of their unity and relation being lost in the eagerness to hunt out the precise places in which they occur, or their most superficial and insignificant resemblances.
That there is something in the word ‘debts,’ which we are bound to keep in mind when we consider this prayer, is evident from the use of the cognate verb by St. Luke, in the other clause of the sentence. “Forgive us our trespasses, for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.” It is evident also from the word ἄφες, ‘send away’ or ‘remit,’ which is common to both Evangelists. Every one feels the appropriateness of such an expression to a creditor’s release. We have no need to go beyond the very simplest notion of such a release; we are not bound to think of deliverance from a prison, or from any infliction consequent upon the failure in the fulfilment of an obligation. Discharge from the debt itself is that which the verb suggests. Perhaps we may find that this sense gains, instead of losing strength, when we apply it to trespasses,—to sins. Still we should first fix our minds upon that which stands in the most obvious connexion with it.
I. Our Lord then bids us pray, Remit, or send away, or discharge, these debts or obligations of ours. Whatever they are, He bids us ask Him for this; this and nothing less. He who tells us to pray, Our Father, says also, Ask for this full remission. He must mean that it is such a request as a child should make of a father, and a father could grant to his child. He who teaches us to say, “Hallowed be thy Name,” bids us ask for this remission. He must mean that God’s Name is hallowed in our making the petition, and in His hearing it. He who taught us to say, “Thy Kingdom come,” bids us say, Grant us this remission. He must mean that it is consistent with His Royalty, and part of it, and a proof of it, that we should desire and receive this release. He who desired us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” tells us also to ask for this sending away of debts. He must mean that this is the Will which is obeyed in heaven, and that so, we are obeying it on earth. He who taught us to look up to God as a Giver, not as an Exactor, and to pray for the bread which is needful for us, further commands us to ask for this freedom. He must mean that rain and fruitful seasons are not more a sign to men of what He is, than remission; that one is as much an utterance of His disposition and purpose as the other; that one is at least as much needed by His creatures as the other. He who came down to declare the Name, the Kingdom, the Will of God, and to bring all good gifts to men, must have wished us to understand Him thus; or He could not have trained us to the use of a word so precise, and yet so unlimited.
II. The objects of this prayer must be those who were united with us when we said, “Our Father,” and, “Give us this day our daily bread.” If there were any for whom we did not pray when we said those words, they will be excluded from these. If there are any human beings whose nature we suppose Christ did not take, any for whom we suppose the Father does not care, for those we do not ask the remission of trespasses. Where such limitations begin, where they must end, I have had occasion to consider while I have been commenting on the former clauses of the prayer. They begin in a feeling that we must, for our own safety, establish certain boundaries beyond which the divine compassion cannot go; they proceed to the invention of securities and exclusions which compass their end so little, that their places must be presently supplied by others; they end in the discovery that we have destroyed the ground under our own feet, while we have been making it untenable for our fellowmen. I need not repeat the evidence, but I must repeat the warning. When the publican prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” he claimed for himself a place among the whole body of sinners; he would not say like the Pharisee, I am not as other men are. If in literal imitation of his example, in real contempt of it, any one of us chooses to say, Forgive me my debts, rather than, Forgive us our debts; he will not go down to his house justified; he will feel that the petition has not been granted.
III. And yet when we come to consider what these debts are which we crave should be put away, it does not seem wonderful that we should choose individualizing language rather than that which is more general. For each man says within himself, Are not these debts mine in the strictest sense? Are they not obligations which I have contracted, and which I have violated? Upon me lies a burden which I cannot shift upon any other human creature—the burden of duties unfulfilled, words unspoken, or spoken violently and untruly; of holy relationships neglected; of days wasted for ever; of evil thoughts once cherished, which are ever appearing now as fresh as when they were first admitted into the heart; of talents cast away; of affections in myself, or in others, trifled with; of light within turned to darkness. So speaks the conscience; so speaks or has spoken the conscience of each man. In some it may be a feeble voice, soon lost in the noises of the outward world, or silenced by violent efforts, or choked by the senses, or bribed by the fancy. In others, it is loud and stormy to-day; then comes a reaction of fierce merriment or a temporary lull, which will be followed again by new blasts of passion. In some it is a low but perpetually sounding knell, witnessing of a death begun and going on in themselves; of the past accursed, the present withered, the future vaguely terrible. But each one who has ever known what conscience is, feels that it is upon his own very self these obligations lie. They may sometimes present themselves to him in dark outward visions, they may be associated inseparably with certain places and persons. But they sit like nightmares upon him; they stop his breathing; they hold him chained. How often would he persuade himself that they are only phantoms! How often would he task his understanding to prove that he has himself brought them thither by some strange conjuring! Why cannot he cast them aside as dreams of the night? Are they anything more? They come back with fearful distinctness; the very act of which conscience testifies, every circumstance, look, tone, clearly recorded; it is no dream of the night. The voice, be it from Heaven or Hell, is a real one, which says, ‘It is done, and cannot be undone,’ and, ‘Thou art the man.’ What signifies it that years have passed away. The act is gone, but thou art still the same. The act is gone into Eternity, and there it will meet thee.
These are the debts; are they to ourselves? Often it seems so. We have suffered by them more than all others—our bodies and souls. But if they are to ourselves, we cannot release them. The more we try, the more hopelessly the coil is twisted round us. Are they to our fellows? Often we think so. We were bound to them by sacred ties which were forgotten; the friend repulsed, because we did not understand him, or his opinions seemed dangerous, or because we took a cry of agony for a mocking laugh; the child petted and fondled into sin, or driven into it by roughness and what we call parental authority; those who looked to be raised and purified by us, degraded through our weak and grovelling ways; those who would have entered into the Kingdom of Heaven hindered, because we cared not that they should be wiser and better than ourselves. But if our debts are to our fellow-creatures, they cannot discharge them. If we could hear each one distinctly saying out of the grave or from Heaven, ‘I forgive,’ though the words might be unspeakably delightful, we feel they would not penetrate deep enough, they would not set us free from that which has seemed to become a part of our own being.
Are they debts to God? The first vague consciousness of such a belief, how terrible it is! All the former aspects of the debt seem mild to this one; yet all were surely prophetical of this one. That sense of permanence of Eternity being bound up with our acts and the results of them, what was this but a witness that they had a relation to God himself? He surely was speaking that voice which we thought came from ourselves, and which was echoed by every thing and every person in the world around. Yes, Debts are Trespasses: we have not only forfeited an obligation, but committed a sin; we have broken a law which was not formed on earth, and cannot be repealed on earth.
But at this point of despair hope begins. It is sin; sin against God. These very feelings we are groaning under are sinful; this sense of evil is evil. For has it not brought death into the soul? Is not this torpor, this incapacity for action, feeling, loving, Death? Assuredly it is. And He willeth not the death of a sinner. He cannot be pleased that I should continue in a state of sin. He is not pleased with it. Then come dim recollections of words heard in the nursery, of doctrines which had been reduced into mere phrases and stored away in the memory as lumber, or more courageously cast aside as absurd contradictions of human experience and ordinary logic; doctrines which had perhaps been associated with the remembrance of some hard, comfortless teacher, who first imparted them to us in traditional shapes and moulds, or who mixed them with views of the divine character from which the conscience and reason revolted; doctrines, however, which do not sound now as if they were unsuited to our necessities or unworthy of One who cares for His creatures; the doctrine of reconciliation, of a Father who so loved the World as to give His only-begotten Son for it; of a Son who came down from heaven not to do his own Will, but the Will of Him who sent him; who did that Will by laying down his life for the sheep; who was manifested to take away sin, and in whom was no sin; by faith in whom a man may rise out of himself, cast away the slough of death, and become a new and righteous creature. Such words,—however imperfectly understood, yet carry in them an amazing power for one who has felt his debts and known them to be sins. But they acquire a newer and a fuller meaning for him when he finds that what seemed to him an entirely isolated experience is that of numbers of his fellowmen; when he hears of publicans and harlots who, through the same storm, have sought and found the same haven. Then he learns to say, and not to say in vain, ‘Forgive us our Trespasses.’
IV. There perhaps he stops; the words which follow are either forgotten or they give him no present anxiety. In the spring-tide of wonder and enjoyment, at the discovery that there is a communication between Earth and Heaven, and that the Angels of Heaven and the God of Heaven rejoice over every sinner that repenteth, it does not strike him that there is the least difficulty in remitting to other men any debts they may have incurred to him. But the first fervour of these convictions dies away. He seeks to keep them alive by association with those who are or have been sharers in them. By mutual encouragement, that which is feeble and flagging in each may be invigorated. Every one has realized something which another might be better for knowing; the barter and interchange of thought will make all richer. It should be so certainly; but those who make the experiment often suspect that the reverse is true. While they are discoursing of that which is passing within, it seems to be within no longer. In the commerce of feelings, notes and bills which there is nothing to meet soon circulate rapidly from hand to hand. And then the latter words of the prayer suddenly assume a disagreeable significance. ‘Forgive as we forgive:’ Surely here is a condition appended to that which we thought absolutely free! Does it mean that our forgiveness is the cause of God’s forgiveness—that He expects so much of us before He dispenses to us out of His infinite treasures? Or does it mean that our forgiveness is the measure of His; that the acts of us fallible creatures determine the kind and degree of the Divine Mercy? Surely if this be so, the Gospel cannot be large and infinite. Forgiving is not forthgiving as we have been used to think; a narrow and clumsy derivation must take the place of this; it must import the giving for an equivalent. Accordingly a great part of men, even of religious men, are content to sit down without determining what the words which they repeat so often actually signify. They cannot mean that, therefore it is better to suppose that they have no distinct meaning at all. ‘Of course,’ thinks the Christian who is trying hard to be at peace with himself, ‘in a sense, I do forgive every one who is indebted to me. I should not be deserving of the goodness I receive if I did not; and if I come short, I ask to be forgiven: is not that the very use of prayer?’
There are, I am sure, thousands and tens of thousands who repeat this petition in spirit and truth, and upon whom it brings down blessings unspeakable, though they could not express to others what they mean by this clause, and though their own minds are probably far from clear about it. Prayer seeks that which lies below all words; it aims at the light whereof that which shines in our understandings is but the dim reflection. From those who pray as children one desires only to learn; their lives are better and more beautiful commentaries upon their prayers than any the schools can furnish. But it is altogether different with those who try to explain away words upon which our Lord dwells with special carefulness; those words to which he drew his disciples’ attention, as if they contained the spirit and essence of the whole form.
‘If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses’ this is His own express language which He illustrates again and again in His other discourses, always strengthening not diminishing its awfulness; making in one case the significant addition, ‘if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.’ It will not do surely to make light of such solemn oracles, or reduce them into nullities, because they do not accord with a notion we have formed about the freeness of Christ’s Gospel. But as little ought we to part with our belief in that freeness or with any deep conviction which has been given us, because something which we have not yet understood seems to contradict it. We need, for our practical life, that the apparently inconsistent principles should be reconciled; and if we are honest with ourselves we shall not be long in discovering the reconciliation.
How is it that persons who have had that lively sense of mercy and forgiveness to which I referred are not able to retain it? They know in their consciences that they do not; they continually confess it; they are sure that they ought to retain it, but it will not stay. The feeling of a debt grows up in the mind again, after they supposed it was cancelled; they refer to the evidence upon which they rested their confidence; it is as satisfactory as ever; they assure themselves that all must be right, and yet their hearts say there is much wrong. Then they resort to theological distinctions and formulas: this sense of debt and sin is very tormenting, no doubt, but it is inevitable; it must stay with us while we are in this bad world. Perhaps so; but must it be ever multiplying, nay producing fresh sin? Must the consciousness of it make me sour to others; often make me false in dealing with myself? Will theological terms and distinctions, or the recollection of bygone experiences, or a general apprehension that God is at peace with us, make ill-temper gracious or self-deception truth? Must there not be some other more excellent way than this of bringing the facts of our own lives into coincidence with the truths of the Bible? One would think that the most obvious, the most excellent way was to study our Lord’s own interpretation of the case. He says that when a servant who had been pardoned the debt of ten thousand talents went out of his lord’s presence, he found a fellow-servant who owed him a hundred pence, and that he took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest, and would not listen to his cry, ‘Have patience with me.’ This, he says, was the cause that his own debt came back to him heavier and more hopeless than ever. Is there not a clear light thrown on the dark passages of our lives by this parable? Only think how we are wont to speak of the obligations which other men are under to us, of the debts they have incurred to us, of the demands which we have a right to make upon them. Only think how exactly our Lord’s language represents our feelings, how it is uttered in all our daily actions. ‘Pay me that thou owest, servant, child, poor dependent, friend, wife, brother:’ is not that the first natural thought of our hearts? Do we not encourage it, justify it to ourselves and others? have we not a host of religious excuses for tolerating it till it becomes the habit of our souls? There is abundance of good-natured charity afloat in the world, charity for all sorts of people, for all forms of distress. But this is the ornamental part of our existence, the capital or fret-work of the building. The substantial part, the pillars of it, we seem to think are our rights; rights to position, property, rank, the homage of others, their gratitude. If these are withheld—the hundred pence which each man has a claim upon from his fellow—with what indignation do we repulse the claims which we had acknowledged that mercy and charity have upon us!
Now, brethren, if this be so, is it very wonderful that the sense of divine forgiveness, the apprehension of perfect unclouded mercy, should not be very clear and strong in our minds?
It is surely the most fantastic of all dreams, that a man can cut his being into two portions, call one of them religious and the other mundane, and administer them on directly opposite principles. One or other must come to nought. If we believe that the world is governed by a forgiving Being, His forgiveness must be recognized as the Law of the Universe; the Law of our being. If we believe that Individual Right is the great principle we are to assert in all common transactions, that principle will be carried to the highest ground of all, and so far as we acknowledge a Divine Being at all, we shall regard Him as one like ourselves; we shall feel that His main desire is to assert His rights over us. I say, so far as we acknowledge a Divine Being at all; for I cannot help perceiving that Atheism is the natural, almost the necessary, refuge from such a notion of the Lord of all as this. The naked contemplation of one who has no will but self-will is so intolerable, that the conscience which remains in human beings, in spite of all their theories, shrinks back in horror from the belief that such an one can be he to whom the name of God, the good, was once ascribed. Yet what avails the denial? If self-will do govern the world, if we confess it to be our lord, we may or may not attribute to it personality; but it does, all the same, hold us in its iron bonds; we are in prison, the evil spirit is our jailor, and we cannot come out till we have paid the uttermost farthing.
Brethren, it is this which makes the consideration of our times so profoundly awful. We cannot avoid the conviction that the maxims upon which we have been acting will come forth into full display; that they will be thrown back upon ourselves; that the rights we have asserted against our fellow-men will be asserted by them against us. We have had and we have warnings enough of this catastrophe; let us hope that they have not been wholly lost upon us. Even yet the dark image of mere selfish power, in one or in a multitude, is not revealed; it struggles strangely, wonderfully in the minds of those who seem most ready to fall down and worship it with the belief of a Love which must rule at last, which we are permitted to obey now. Oh! if we might interpret to any that strange conflict of two opposing principles—two Kingdoms—in the womb of humanity! Oh! that some voice might be heard declaring clearly and mightily, ‘The elder shall serve the younger. He who won the battle in the wilderness, proved that His Father and not Satan, love and not self, is the King of kings, and Lord of lords.’
But if that proclamation is to be heard on the housetops, it must first be spoken in the ear in closets. It must come forth as the interpretation and fulfilment of this prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them who trespass against us.’ We must thoroughly believe and understand that what seems to be a limiting condition of the request, is really an enlargement of its scope and power. We ask to be forgiven, and the revelation of God’s mercy in Christ, of the love which is in Himself, of the perfect atonement made once for all, is an answer. It seems to be transitory; we try to fall back upon it, and feel that that which we trusted in yesterday is not so strong to-day. Why? Because we asked too little, because we did not enter into the fulness of the word, ‘Remit,’ ‘Send away.’ If we had, we should have prayed not for a momentary sense of Forgiveness, but for the spirit of Forgiveness; not merely that we may know what God is and is to us, but what He can accomplish in us; that we may understand in Him and shew forth in ourselves that mercy which is no tolerance of wrong but the tormentor of it, which does not reject stern discipline, but makes it an instrument; which is a fire to consume the evil of all in whom it dwells, of all to whom it reaches. Forgiveness is not forgiveness when it is turned to our ease and comfort. It is in its nature expansive, diffusive; it cannot be cooped up in the heart of any creature; it must go forth into the open air, or it dies. The debts, we know it well, cannot lose their penal hold upon the conscience, their present and future terror, till love comes in to fulfil them and transfer them; till the man who in his pride thought that all nations owed him homage, learns to say, ‘I am a Debtor to Jew and Greek, to Barbarian and Scythian, to bond and free.’ The sense of sin—sin itself—does not finally depart from the conscience till love its great enemy possesses the ground which it once occupied, till he who was crushed under the sense of powerlessness and evil—‘To will is present with me, but how to do that I will I find not,’ can exclaim, ‘He worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure,’ and, ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’
Wherefore, as it should be one of our saddest subjects of confession this Lent that we have not lived as if we were under the law of Forgiveness which God has established for us and for all, so also let us earnestly believe, whensoever we pray, that we are praying to a Forgiving and Merciful Father, who can yet do for us more than we ask or think; even inspiring us with His own love, and enabling us to walk in love and to forgive all who are indebted to us, as He for Christ’s sake hath forgiven us.