offered to us in the name of Jesus Christ is not, and our own moral sense
ought to assure us that it could not be, the being let off punishment.
"Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their
sins," not from any external pains or penalties of their sins. To be
saved from sin, is to have sin brought to an end, abolished within us. It
is the recovery of the true self, the restoration of that union with God
which is, here and now, eternal life. In other words, understanding the
Divine Wrath as we have seen reason to understand it, forgiveness must
mean to cease to be, or to cease to identify ourselves with, that in us
which is the object of the Divine Wrath. In short, forgiveness is, in
the great phrase of St. Paul, reconciliation with God.

How, then, is forgiveness or reconciliation to be obtained? The answer
which the apostle gives is this: "God was in Christ reconciling the world
to Himself." Let us try to see what this means.

* * * * *

There can only be one way of ceasing to be the object of the Divine
Wrath, and that is by identifying oneself with it; if we may use the
catch-phrase, by becoming its subject instead of its object. This means
that, so far as is in our power, we must enter into the Divine Mind in
regard to sin, and our own sins in particular. Up to the limit of our
power, we must make that Mind our own mind, we must hate sin, and our
sins, as God hates them.

There is one word in the New Testament which expresses all this, and that
is the word only partially and inadequately translated "repentance." The
word thus represented is [Greek text], and [Greek text] is exactly "a
change of mind." It really means the coming over to God's side, the
entire revolution of our mental attitude and outlook with regard to sin.
The word stands for self-identification with the Wrath of God, with the
Divine Mind in its outlook upon sin. That change of mind is itself
reconciliation, forgiveness, remission of sins. And that which alone
makes [Greek text] and, therefore, forgiveness, possible, is the Death of
Jesus Christ upon the Cross.

For that Death is the perfect revelation, in the only way in which it
could be interpreted to us, that is, in terms of our common human life,
of the Wrath of God, the Divine hostility to, and repudiation of sin. For
the Death of Christ was the complete repudiation of sin, by God Himself,
in our manhood. The Incarnate Son laid down His life in th