ART. V. CHRIST'S PARDONING PREROGATIVE

Ir was the claim and exercise of the pardoning prerogative that brought Jesus Christ to the cross. So long as he simply healed the body of its diseases and infirmities, multiplying its food supply as a great breadwinner, he was a public benefactor and a philanthropist. What he did up to that point as the good physician was in the line of sanitation and the public weal. It was in the interest of civilization that the land be cleared of lepers and demoniacs, that withered hands be healed, and palsied limbs made strong, and blind eyes opened, and deaf ears unstopped. All this re duced the great army of alms-seekers and dependents that thronged the highways. Travel was so much more pleasant with no lepers showing their sores and crying, "Unclean, unclean"! If all the physical sufferings of the people could thus be removed how much more self-respecting the nation, and no longer would there be the reminder of moral evil by the oft-repeated question, "Which did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" What a benefactor, too, was a breadwinner for the nation! Famine had no terrors when there was among them one who could multiply a few loaves and fishes to feed a multitude, and that so lavishly that the fragments remaining exceeded so greatly the original food supply. No wonder the people would come by force to make him king—the most available man in the nation, one who could provision an army by multiplying the contents of a dinner basket! Then, too, what enemy could conquer them when their king was one whom even the winds and the sea obey? Famine, pestilence, war, none of these scourges of the race had any terrors for a nation whose king had such control of the forces of nature. Now was at hand the era of peace and plenty throughout the length and breadth of the land. Verily a greater than Solomon is here and the best days of the chosen people are to be eclipsed in the glory of David's greater son. Hail, King of the Jews! But all that was simply the achievement of civilization, the betterment of man's physical and temporal condition. That was not the end of Christ's mission-a mere humanitarian end. All that would

come to pass when the followers of Christ should hold the balance of power among the nations, and the oppressed of every nation should seek an abode in Christian lands, where life was safe and where property rights would be protected and religious freedom would be secured. But these were to be incidental results; Christ's real mission was not to civilize the world but to Christianize it, not to heal and feed the body but to pardon and redeem the soul, not to save from suffering but to save from sin. When, therefore, in healing a hopeless invalid, one who, utterly helpless, needed to be borne of four into the presence of Christ, as our Lord "saw their faith," doubtless the faith of the five-the faith of the sick man being kindled by the faith of the four who believed that Christ would heal him, a faith all the stronger no doubt because of the hearty sorrow for the sins which had affected both body and soul-he said unto the sick of the palsy, "Son, thy sins are forgiven." Possibly these were more grateful words than had Christ first bidden the palsied limbs to become strong; for it was his sins more than his disease that now troubled the palsied man, and godly sorrow had worked repentance unto life. This claim to exercise the pardoning prerogative, which was to be repeated afterwards in the case of the woman who was a sinner and of the dying malefactor by his side to whom was given a passport into Paradise, awoke the bitterest opposition, and justly, if he were not divine. This was Christ's first contested miracle. He had ceased to be a mere philanthropist, healing the diseases of the body. He claimed to exercise the divine prerogative of pardon. No wonder the scribes reasoned in their hearts (amazed beyond power of speech at such audacity), "Why doth this man thus speak? He blasphemeth: who can forgive sins but one, even God?" Christ, perceiving in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, saith unto them, "Which is easier, to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?" They had known how absolutely helpless the palsied man was as four men bore him on his bed into the presence of Christ. Is pronouncing absolution a mere thing of words whose efficacy there is no means of testing, therefore easy to anyone who dared the role of a blasphemer?-in which he could escape detec

tion unless God should smite him dead. Is it an "easier" thing to do than to heal so hopeless a case of palsy? "But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house." It was the command Christ gave to the impotent man with a chronic infirmity of thirtyeight years who lay at the pool of Bethesda with no man to help him. Neither could have moved a step unaided. But recovered by a divine power they were both able to obey: the one pardoned of his sins, and the other, who had been helpless years before the birth of Jesus, now went forth bearing his bed, even though it were on the Sabbath day. The Lord of the Sabbath no less than the Son of man, with authority to execute judgment, with power on earth to forgive sins, had spoken the absolving word which healed as well as pardoned. Well also might the guests in Simon's house be amazed when Jesus said of the nameless woman (possibly the sweet name of innocent childhood substituted, as usual, by some assumed name without such sacred associations), "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven." Most grateful to her penitent spirit, with her tears washing the Saviour's feet, were the added words, "Thy sins are forgiven." Again the astounding exercise of the pardoning prerogative amazed, not to say shocked, the listeners beyond the power of speech; so that they said within themselves, "Who is this that even forgiveth sins?" In each of these instances as well as in the case of the dying malefactor our Lord forgave sins, not arbitrarily, but because of the greatness of faith and the genuineness and depth of repentance. In no case was there so complete an abandonment of false views as in that of the penitent malefactor, who recognized that Christ had a kingdom when even his chosen apostles disbelieved it and forsook him, and prayed for humble admission into it when no other prayer reached the ear of the dying Christ. Our Lord dared exercise the right to pardon even on the cross. Never was there greater blasphemy if he were not indeed the Son of God and our Judge. "Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins." Jesus is Saviour or blasphemer; which?

Is the pardoning power or prerogative exercised by Christ a delegated or an inherent one? The pardoning prerogative is vested in the Sovereign because it is against the Sovereign that sin has been committed. All attempts to exercise it, save in the name of sovereign authority, are idle and meaningless. It was only because of his oneness with the Father that Christ claimed and exercised this sovereign power. All of his assertion of the sole right to exercise the pardoning power which awoke such fierce opposition, as recorded in the fifth chapter of John's gospel, was as unmistakable a claim to deity as was his willingness to receive the worship of his disciples after his resurrection. While he declared, "I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge," he also said, "And my judgment is righteous because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." Christ ever taught that his mission was not self-originated any more than it was self-sustained and self-directed. Because it was a mission of dependence and of absolute obedience it showed a nature of absolute oneness with God. Because of that oneness with the Father Christ could say, "For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son; that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father that sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of man." These are not the words of one consciously and simply exercising a mere delegated authority but of the eternal Son of the Father, in whose very humanity still exists the lifegiving power and the power of exercising judgment in pardoning sin. He shows the one in restoring the dead to life now as he will ultimately speak the words of life to the dead in their graves; and he shows the other in speaking words of pardon now as he will ultimately do from the throne when he shall say, “Come, ye

blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Eternal principles are at the foundation of God's government, and the perfect administration of those great and eternal principles cannot be delegated to any mere created being, however transcendent in wisdom and in purity. They who stand before the judgment seat of Christ, here or hereafter, do not receive the judgment of a man, but of the Son of God because he is also the Son of man. In his essential being, even in the days of his flesh, Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." The pardoning prerogative is not a delegated one simply because he is the Son of man; it is because he is God manifest in the flesh, the Word that was in the beginning with God and was God, the Word become flesh and dwelling among us so that we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess is not man become God, but God become man that he might fill all things. Christ glorified not himself to be made a High Priest or a Judge of quick and dead. It was neither an assumed nor a delegated office. He was High Priest forever. "Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted."

In all this exercise of the pardoning prerogative and his announcing himself as the final judge of the living and the dead Christ bases every claim on his absolute oneness with the Father. "I and my Father are one," Christ declared; "and the Jews took up stones again to stone him." His meaning was unmistakable. So, too, in that great passage in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, pronounced by Phillips Brooks "the pearl of the sayings of Christ," where our Lord says, "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any man know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Whatever divine power belongs to the Christ, and he claims all