Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary: Collated from his Diary by Benjamin FunkKline, John
Religion
Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary: Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk
Kline, John
Kline, John, 1797-1864
I have sometimes heard a brother or a sister say: "I can forgive, but
I cannot forget." Brethren, we would not feel very well if the Lord
were to say this to us and of us. How would we be made to feel if our
blessed Lord were to say to each of us: "I am willing to forgive your
trespasses against me; I am willing to save you, because I have
promised to save all who repent and believe my Gospel; but I can never
forget the way you have treated me, and will never be willing to trust
you as I could have trusted you; and can never again have the same
confidence in you that I would have had, had you treated me in a
different way"? Such forgiveness as this on the part of our Lord
toward us would rob salvation of all its joy. It would turn the sun
into darkness and the moon into blood. It would change the harmony of
heaven into notes of discord in our ears. But this would be the very
sort of forgiveness that is implied in the saying: "I can forgive, but
I cannot forget."
Notice, however, the care and the order apparent in the insertion of
that loving clause, "and your sins will I remember no more." Notice
the introduction: "I will be to you a God; and ye shall be to me a
people." In what follows the Divine Love is strongly marked: "For I
will be merciful to your iniquities, and your sins will I remember no
more." This last crowns it all. The same thing is meant by the prophet
in another place where the Lord says: "As far as the east is from the
west, so far have I removed your sins from you;" and again: "He hath
cast our sins into the bottom of the sea;" so deep down are they that
they will never rise up against us any more.
Such must our forgiveness of one another be, brethren and sisters, if
we would imitate the Lord. We should never forget that genuine
forgiveness implies a complete forgetfulness of all trespasses in the
past. Our Lord says: "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither
will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." To forgive from
the heart is to forgive in love; and love thinketh no ill of one's
brother or sister.
Let each one examine himself. If you feel in your heart that you love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and your brother and your
sister in the Lord as you love yourself, I feel authorized in behalf
of Christ and the church to say to you that Jesus will remember your
sins no more. You have a right to sing the song:
"Savior, more than life to me,
I am clinging close to thee;
Let thy blood, by faith applied,
Keep me ever near thy side.
Every day and every hour,
Let me feel thy cleansing power,
Till my soul is lost in love,
In a brighter world above."
TUESDAY, September 20. Love feast at our meetinghouse. John 3 was
read. David Correll and Abraham Miller and his wife were baptized.
WEDNESDAY, September 21. Benjamin Bowman and I start very early to
Hampshire County, Virginia. We get dinner at Rorabaugh's, and reach
Moorefield by night, after a ride on horseback of forty-seven miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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