But there are two sins, not of individual deed, but of spiritual condition, which cannot be forgiven ; that is, as it seems to me, which cannot be excused, passed by, made little of by the tenderness even of God, inasmuch as they will allow no forgiveness to come into the soul, they will permit no good influence to go on working alongside of them; they shut God out altogether. Therefore the man guilty of these can never receive into himself the holy renewing saving influences of God’s forgiveness. God is outside of him in every sense, save that which springs from his creating relation to him, by which, thanks be to God, he yet keeps a hold of him, although against the will of the man who will not be forgiven. The one of these sins is against man; the other against God.
The former is unforgivingness to our neighbour; the shutting of him out from our mercies, from our love–so from the universe, as far as we are a portion of it–the murdering therefore of our neighbour. It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated.
I concur. My take on MacDonald, is that he insists that sin and evil are never co-eternal (equals) with God. So there is always the implied: While we still cling to our unforgiveness … our hatreds … our sin … we cannot, with those things pretend that we would even want to be in God’s presence, much less that God would allow it as if those things could be overlooked and let run rampant among His children.
A long time ago, I read a very good description of forgiveness by John MacArthur (I know. I know. I’ll just say, he doesn’t seem to be the man he used to be.). He talked about how in forgiving someone, (probably after dealing with things that must be dealt with; it’s been a very long time since I read it) we are committed to never bring to the other person’s mind again the thing for which we’ve forgiven them. No reference, no jab, no dig, nothing. We must treat the thing as gone from all memory. And we must also train ourselves to do the very same thing with our own memory of the thing. We may not bring it back to mind, savor it, mull it over. We must banish it from our thought space, whenever it attempts to appear.
I think the idea is the same as MacDonald’s. By bringing the thing up again or savoring it, either to ourselves or the other person, we are seeking revenger or murdering that person again and again.
Yep. And it’s a deliberate act of the will, like any other refusal to sin. We aren’t guilty of being tempted but what we do with that temptation.
We have probably all been on the other end, too, where we know we aren’t really forgiven. There is no repair or restitution. Nothing we can offer or do is good enough. There will be no reconciliation.
That is really tough - and all too common for any one of us. In fact, what does one do when it isn’t even in your power to make something right any more. Like if I accidentally (or even on purpose) cut somebody off in traffic - offending a stranger whom I probably will never meet. Or the waitress to whom I made a wisecrack trying to be funny in front of my friends, but at her expense - not even knowing her name or who she is - I would hope that she would have mercifully forgotten about that after all these decades, but I have no way of knowing (or apologizing) - but I still remember it. With shame.
One hopes that common grace can come into play somehow. But who knows how others might have been affected. God have mercy. It also helps me be patient, though, when I’m the recipient of thoughtless or mean behavior. There, in the grace of God, went [still go] I.
[And this isn’t to diminish the much more serious situations you alluded to, Kendel, where people very much know each other - probably even within families - but for whom bitterness as taken its toll and widened a gulf. That is SO much harder yet. I only bring up other situations to illustrate how widely and deeply across so much of life the hard practice of forgiveness is so relevant - so badly needed.]
[and a pps… While MacDonald does seem to take all life and all sin super seriously - it seems necessary that so much of routine life (like traffic interactions) is at the level of “just brush it off” offense. Most of us aren’t trying to ruin other people’s lives or days with our driving habits - it doesn’t mean we’re doing nothing wrong or that we shouldn’t work to improve our behavior. But there is also a “let’s all be reasonable here” kind of license, that occasionally some of us legitimately need to be in a bit more of a hurry, and especially if we’re distracted, we do thoughtless things not even aware of how another might be taking it. Job felt obliged to make recompense even for committed sins he might not even know he committed!]
I hope my pointed comments did not rise to the level of meanness for you.
Quite awhile ago I picked up a book called How to be Free From Bitterness. It caught my interest for who wrote it, and there was this incredible story about a parent who came to their pastor because their child was severely acting up. The pastor’s advice was for the mom or dad to give their child a 5 or 15 minute hug. The parent said they couldn’t do it. Bitterness. I think the pastor then said they needed the hug more than the child.
This is somewhere along the line of why my counselor/mentor friend often says, if a brother offends you, go and tell him. And it’s usually the little things that build up over time, that go unaddressed, builds resentment and eventually ruins the relationship.
And I should have hastened to add … many of us don’t hesitate to criticize the views of others here with what we view as “hard truths”, and if we are prepared to speak so, then it behooves us to receive the same of whatever it is we need to hear. It’s part of the public traffic and nature of a forum. So while we do strive to be gracious and don’t want to hurt others, we also expect a level of “thick skin” - and if I expect that of others, I’d better have thick skin myself to receive the same. We don’t always want to be having to tiptoe around everything with everybody.
All that just to say: be as pointed as you feel you need to be (toward me anyway). I don’t speak for all forum participants, and there will be some that are more vulnerable or sensitive - so discernment and sensitivity is never misplaced either.
No man who will not forgive his neighbour, can believe that God is willing, yea, wanting to forgive him, can believe that the dove of God’s peace is hovering over a chaotic heart, fain to alight, but finding no rest for the sole of its foot. For God to say to such a man, “I cannot forgive you,” is love as well as necessity. If God said, “I forgive you,” to a man who hated his brother, and if (as is impossible) that voice of forgiveness should reach the man, what would it mean to him? How would the man interpret it? Would it not mean to him, “You may go on hating. I do not mind it. You have had great provocation, and are justified in your hate”? No doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is, into the account; but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be urged for the hate, the more reason, if possible, that the hater should be delivered from the hell of his hate, that God’s child should be made the loving child that he meant him to be. The man would think, not that God loved the sinner, but that he forgave the sin, which God never does. Every sin meets with its due fate–inexorable expulsion from the paradise of God’s Humanity. He loves the sinner so much that he cannot forgive him in any other way than by banishing from his bosom the demon that possesses him, …
There is a certain logic to the gospel, that when faithfully preached leads to this apparent conclusion. We would do well to pay closer attention to the Apostle Paul’s “May it never be!”
Is there a difference between “I cannot forgive you” and “I will not forgive you.” Skeptical theism comes to mind. Again. As does as does lèse-majesté.
“I cannot forgive you” leaves open the possibility (or one can hope) that perhaps something can change so that I can be forgiven in the future even if not yet now.
“I will not forgive you” (coming from the mouth of God) sounds much more dire and final - as in … this is true now and for all time.
We were told to “go and make disciples …”
Asking “what is the point of this?” would be like asking your commanding officer, “so what’s the point?” after he issued you orders. He/She would immediately know that your “boot-camp” training must have been insufficient - you signed up - you went through all the training, which should have prepared you, yet obviously it didn’t. The entire book of Matthew is the answer to “what’s the point” of the command shared with us at its conclusion.
My short answer then would be: the point is - that people may know and follow Christ, our greatest treasure.