RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 248, 18 October 1924, Page 18

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT DAY OUTLOOK. THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS.

(By REV. G. S. COOK.i

Belief in the forgiveness of sins is one of the articles of the Christian creed. The Lord's Prayer links the petition for forgiveness with that for daily bread. We are so bound up with individuals and other nations in life and labour that the conditions of peace and goodwill amongst men, which best assures the daily bread of the world, can only be established by a great deal of forgiveness of trespasses all round. Host people bear three loads —that of the past, the present, and the future. A full belief in the forgiveness of Bins and tko goodness of God lightens immensely the shadow of the past and the fear of the future. But there is much more than this behind the Christian belief in the forgiveness of Bins. It implies belief in a God who has revealed i Himself in Christ a knowledge of right and wrong, and of one's self a sense of sin, a hunger and thirst after righteousness that leads to repentance. A faith in Christ which gives a right relationship with God. Also the exerciso of prayer, personal effort and service, and forgiveness of others, which make religion a reality and not a profession only. Then the consciousness of sins to be forgiven differs so greatly, and is affected by temperament, training, outlook and experience. The absence of this sense is not necessarily a proof of goodness. It may be due to eelfrighteousneßS on one hand or a callous conscience on the other. God's forgiveness of sins is not revealed to us as a cheap and easy thing. Easy-going parents who forgive easily and lightly are often cursed by the prodigals, and wasters created by their laxity. Forgiveness of God is linked with the Cross and the death of Christ for our sine. The best earthly interests of men and women are based on moral laws, the breaches of which carries penalties in disease, disorder, remorse, failure and dissatisfaction, and the decay of nations. These consequences, and the Cross of Christ are God's appalling protest against sin. Some seek forgiveness because they know they have broken God's laws, and fear the consequences. They experience some of the destruction wrought by wrongdoing, and of the impossibility of escaping punishment. They feel that they would do anything to be reconciled with God, and so the law does become a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ as a Saviour and reconciler. The best of this class are troubled because they have stained the soul and humiliated at falling below their better selves. Their cry is:— ''Ob that a man might arise In mc, Thut the man I am may cease to be." Others get a vision of the greatness and love of God, and of their own disloyalty, forgetfulness and separation from Him. Coming to themselves like the prodigal, sick of the husks and the company they have tried to console themselves with, they say in heart: ."I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto "Hi™, ' Father, I have sinned -against , Heaven and in Thy sight. Make mc as one of Thy hired servants. , ". A He meets them half-way, and they taste the forgiveness of sins. Some others feel the burden and sin of wasted opportunities. Like the dying woman ■who prayed: "Oh, God, give mc a little more time. I have done no good in my life." Adam Lindsay Gordon wrote in "The Sick Stockrider": "For good undone and gifts mispent: for resolutions vain, 'Tie somewhat late to trouble: this I know, I would lire the en mc life over if I bad to live again; And the chances are, I go where most men so." Gordon was a man with noble qualities and a poetic genius, a passionate lover of a good horse, a noted steeplechase rider, a man of clean life, neither a gambler nor a drunkard. But he was a reckless fatalist, lacking faith in God; and without that to sustain him he finished as a suicide. What a. difference it would have meant to him, what assets of strength, and hope and courage, if he had experienced a definite Christian faith, the friendship of Jesus Christ, the Fatherhood of God, and the forgiveness of sins. The justification of the Christian Church is that it stands for this message, and to remind all men and women, who are pitifully in need of it, of the forgiveness of sins.