Divine Pardon

Duncan Sinclair

How often has the cry gone up from sinful humanity, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me"! Miserable after material indulgence, despondent after a sinful bout, ashamed after giving way to a gust of willful passion, the repentant ones have turned to God entreating Him to take away their sins and to give them again that consciousness of purity which alone can bring them peace. And as they have prayed out of the depths of remorse, perhaps these words of Isaiah have come to them in admonition and in love, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

Christian Science teaches that God is infinite Love, infinite good, and draws the inevitable conclusion that evil is unreal. This means that everything of a wicked nature, everything of a sinful nature, is illusory. In reality, then, all the passions of men, all the materiality which seems to have sway over them, all the shame, sorrow, and remorse of mortals, have no existence in real being. God, who is infinite Love, infinite good, has created nothing that is evil, nothing that can know evil, nothing that can sin, be sorrowful, despondent, remorseful, nothing that needs to repent. God's creation, including individual man, is perfect, reflecting good alone, and this to an unlimited extent.

But mortals believe in the reality of matter and evil. In consequence, mortals are victimized by materiality and are prone to indulge in sin. And indulgence in sin brings upon them the suffering and agony which in their ignorance they too often attribute to God. Thinkers are beginning to recognize that in telling the truth about the allness of God, good, Christian Science is laying bare the unreality of evil; and they are admitting that the sinner is not in need of being rescued from something real, but, rather, that he needs to be awakened to the fact that he is being deceived by error — illusion — and that his real selfhood, which is the image of his creator, is spiritual and perfect, and cannot possibly fall from that perfection.

Now, when one who is a sinner perceives these truths as Christian Science reveals them, what should he do? He knows that he is indulging in something unknown to God, something utterly unreal. He knows that to continue to do so would be utmost foolishness. He knows that the cause of his suffering and sorrow, and perhaps disease, is his indulgence in sin. Surely, then, he should stop sinning. And that is what has happened repeatedly after the allness of God, good, has been understood and the unreality of evil discerned. Let the erring one ask God's forgiveness — a correct mode of approach to divine Love, for it is the petitionary attitude of repentance. Then divine Truth will come to the repentant one and abide with him, and the error will be swept away. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 11 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "Truth bestows no pardon upon error, but wipes it out in the most effectual manner."

The divine method of pardon, then, consists of destroying the desire to sin. As thought becomes aligned with Truth and Love, as spirituality displaces materiality, sin proportionately ceases, or, in other words, is forgiven. Our Leader writes (ibid., p. 339): "The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. Divine Life destroys death, Truth destroys error, and Love destroys hate. Being destroyed, sin needs no other form of forgiveness." How these words clarify the question of the forgiveness of sin! How clearly they show that sin is forgiven only as it is destroyed in human belief!

What of the penalties that so frequently follow the indulgence of sin, those sometimes tragic penalties? Christian Science teaches that penalty should end with the destruction of sin, since no real law exists to punish man. If one is living a good life, a life, that is, of obedience to God's law, he is protected by that law and cannot suffer. It will not, therefore, do for anyone who in the past has acted sinfully, and suffered accordingly, to think that the suffering must continue. He should endeavor, instead, to realize that the cause for penalty, namely, his indulgence in sin, having ceased, he is now immune from penalty, even as an aftermath.

Christian Science never ceases to warn men of the danger of sin. But while it tells them that sin penalizes itself, it shows them the way to freedom through divine pardon. Mrs. Eddy's words on page 40 of Science and Health sum up the question of divine forgiveness: "Science removes the penalty only by first removing the sin which incurs the penalty. This is my sense of divine pardon, which I understand to mean God's method of destroying sin."

Duncan Sinclair

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