| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 12 |
Page 6 |
Confession is necessary. David tells us that while he kept silence his bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long. He found no peace. Unconfessed sin is unforgiven sin and is a fire within the breast. If we cover our sins we cannot prosper, but when we confess them and forsake them we shall find mercy. God runs to meet the prodigal who returns with penitence. An old writer says:—
If one draw near
Unto God, with praise and prayer,
Half a cubit, God will go
Twenty leagues to meet him so:
He who walketh unto God,
God will run upon the road,
All the quicklier to forgive
One who learns at last to live.
What is God’s forgiveness? Is it simply the remission of the penalty? Does God merely save us from punishment, and nothing more? Would that satisfy us and give us peace? It is not the dread of the consequences of sin that is its most fearful element. It is the burden upon the soul, the sense of guilt, the anguish of remorse — this is what makes sin so terrible. Would then the lifting away of the penalty, while all the bitterness of sin itself stays in the heart, be a forgiveness that would bring joy? Would heaven make us happy if we could be taken into its glory, with all this woe within?
No; the forgiveness that will bring blessing must not only remit the penalty, but must also include the taking away of the sin itself, the undoing of the terrible ruin which sin has wrought in us, the new creating of our life in the divine image, and the making of us as though we had not sinned at all. Here it is that the work of Christ’s redemption comes in. Salvation means more than the removal of guilt. The old legend says that a dove nestled on the cross when Jesus was dying. The suggestion is that the power of the Holy Spirit was necessary to complete the work of grace in the life cleansed by the blood of Christ. The Lamb of God taketh away — not the penalty only of sin, but the sin itself.
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