“As far as the east is from the west,

so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.”

(Psalm 103:12)

I heard a Mississippi forest ranger on a television program last week discussing the causes of costly forest fires in his state. Hundreds of acres are being destroyed, he said, by careless campers and cigarette smokers who don’t intend to burn up the woods. But the most destructive fires of all, he said, are set by arsonists who send thousands of acres up in smoke deliberately because they have a grudge against some neighbor. To me this is appalling.

An insurance adjuster shot and almost killed a Christian Science practitioner a few weeks ago in Chicago. For twenty-one years resentment had smoldered in this man’s heart against the one whom he held responsible for his daughter’s death. The child had suffered from diabetes and the practitioner had influenced the father to withhold insulin. Through all the years the bereaved father had never forgiven the practitioner. Finally his vengeful spirit erupted in an attempt to kill.

How many violent, destructive acts flare up every day among us because someone has harbored an unforgiving spirit toward someone else. Why, it hasn’t been very long since a Memphis man shot and killed his wife, and when questioned by the police as to his motive, said he did it “because she refused to go to church with me.”

But did you know that some of the most deplorable damage in human life by an unforgiving spirit is done, not to others, but to the person who harbors the unforgiving spirit? Sometimes it is not the other fellow but oneself that one cannot forgive.

A paralyzed man was brought to Jesus one day by four of his friends who hoped he might be healed. What was the cause of the man’s paralysis? We aren’t told. The popular notion in Palestine then was that all suffering was due to sin. There was a day, not long ago, when we would have spoken of such an idea as a foolish superstition. But not now. Of late we have been learning a lot about the connection between some kinds of illness and repressed feelings of guilt.

Jesus’ diagnosis of the man’s malady and his direct spiritual therapy is revealed in His simple statement to the paralytic: “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” What was the man’s trouble? An unforgiving spirit. But it was directed not at others but at himself. Have you heard someone say: “Oh, I’ll never forgive myself”? Well, whether consciously or unconsciously, that is what the paralytic had said to himself. The result — paralysis. He couldn’t move. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it. But clinical cases by the thousands just like this can be produced by physicians who have attended, diagnosed, and witnessed the cure of such maladies.

“In a composite volume called The Spirit, edited by Canon Streeter, Dr. Harfield, the well-known psychiatrist of Harley Street, tells of a soldier completely paralyzed because the desire to run away from the enemy was in acute conflict with the desire to do his duty. The paralysis — of course produced unconsciously — solved the problem, though at the expense of the patient’s health. As a paralyzed man, he could not be expected to go into battle, but at the same time the guilt of being a coward was assuaged by the fact that his reason was such a good one. He was paralyzed. The paralysis thus ended the fear and relieved the guilt of duty undone.” (Psychology, Religion and Healing — p. 62 — Leslie Weatherhead)

And of course, these physical manifestations of the deplorable problem of unforgiven sin represent only a small fraction of that vast horde of sufferers, in fact, the whole human race, who suffer in mind and spirit from our greatest problem, an unforgiving spirit. Oh, the paralyzed human relationships and the impotent personalities caused by unforgiven sin.

Now it is the glory of the Christian gospel that it does not deal with surface, superficial symptoms but goes straight to the root cause of human ills, namely sin, and radically treats this malady. But how deal with sin? How stamp out this diabolical infection? What is the unvarying specific? Why, forgive it. To the paralyzed man, Jesus said: “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” The Christian gospel proclaims that sins are to be forgiven and so got rid of.

Jesus came to proclaim in His preaching, to reveal in His teachings, in His living and in His dying, the antecedent forgiveness of God. A forgiveness which meets the sinner at the point of his sin with a pardon already signed and sealed. A forgiveness that is ready ahead of time. A forgiveness which is granted by a gracious God without any considerations of whether or not the sinner has earned it or deserved it. A forgiveness which the Psalmist dimly discerned and expressed by saying: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” A forgiveness which overwhelmed the Apostle Paul and wrung from his lips the grateful cry: “While we were yet sinners, while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, Christ died for us.”

Now, when to the poor paralytic Jesus said: “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” immediately Jesus had a controversy on His hands. You would think people would shout, “Praise God, the man is healed and his sins are forgiven.” But no! The Scribes and Pharisees were critical of Him. They believed in the forgiveness of sin all right, but only for the repentant. This paralytic had shown no repentance. How did the Carpenter of Nazareth know that the man was penitent?

Does it seem strange that Jesus should draw fire from His enemies at the point of His doctrine of the forgiveness of sins? It should not surprise us. Last week in Berlin a priceless canvass by Peter Paul Rubens was ruined by an unidentified acid thrower. The world of art today is horrified at such vandalism. Well, the religious world of Jesus’ day was horrified at all Jesus said and did to destroy the portrait of the God they worshiped — a wrathful, judging, meticulous God who grudgingly forgave. But that portrait of God in minds of men must be destroyed if they were to believe in and commit themselves to the forgiving God whose antecedent forgiveness would meet them anywhere.

Oh, to what ends Jesus went to blot out the wrong picture and to paint the true one. On the night of His last supper with the disciples, taking the cup, He said: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for the forgiveness of sins.” And hanging on the cross He prayed for the crucifiers: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And I cannot believe this petition was a conscious striving with an unrelenting Father who would grudgingly forgive, but rather a conscious expression of the Father’s antecedent forgiveness with which He was ever in agreement.

Dwight L. Moody, in one of his great addresses, described the Resurrected Christ giving His disciples their last orders before His ascension. “Go ye, therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” And Moody represents Peter as interrupting and correcting his Lord: “You don’t mean every creature do you, Lord? What about those Jerusalem sinners who were only a few days ago crucifying you?” But Jesus answers: “Yes, Peter, every creature. It is with the Jerusalem sinners that I want you to begin. Go search out the man who spat in my face: tell him that I forgive him. Go search out the man who put the cruel crown of thorns on my brow: tell him I have a crown ready for him in my kingdom, if he will accept salvation, a crown without thorns. Go, seek that poor soldier who drove the spear into my side: tell him there is a nearer way to my heart than that. Tell him I forgive him freely and that I will make him a soldier of the cross, and my banner over him shall be love.”

What is so hard for us to realize and accept is that God’s love for us and His forgiveness is not lessened by our moral failures. We may break the relationship, but He never withdraws His love. The real God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ does not ever say: “If you are not an obedient son, your Father will not love you.” We do not have to try to appease God, or buy His love, or attempt to earn it. We can only kneel down and humbly accept it.

This is the secret of the charm and power of those wonderful people, the Alcoholics Anonymous. As Fulton Ousler writes of them: “They have found a power greater than themselves which they diligently serve. And that gives them a charm that never was elsewhere on land and sea; it makes you know that God Himself is really charming, because the AA people reflect His mercy and His forgiveness.”

This then is the heart of the gospel — the good news Jesus Christ entrusted to His church — the indescribable, unbelievable, yet real, honest-to-goodness antecedent forgiveness of God for every one of us miserable sinners. And what are we to do with it? Just accept it. Stop trying to earn it, or qualify for it, or demand that others prove their worthiness to receive it. Just accept it gratefully and humbly and let that divine forgiveness flow through our lives to our brothers and sisters and parents and children and neighbors and enemies — and it will heal our sick world.