At this point in the Sermons, MacDonald has laid a firm foundation of his thoughts on which to begin to build. Child, Father, Inheritance, Love, and Faith are cornerstones of any Christian belief. We are now ready to place a new layer of stones upon these, beginning with forgiveness.
Forgiveness
The removal of the mist from the Father’s face is to understand that relationship is the irreducible truth of the Divine. The love They share flows out and is expressed in Their giving. The central purpose of giving Life to children, God’s or ours, is so that they can share in our lives and live in the fullness of it! The Trinity’s gifts are many and precede our awareness and asking of and for them. The problem has never been with the grace and mercy They give, but the receiving, opening and applying of them.
Jesus is our Forgiveness and His forgiveness precedes our repentance! Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Like all other gifts, the need for forgiveness was expected and prepared for in the gracious heart of God!
However, the greatest gifts are others, our neighbors! This includes our fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, children and grandchildren, friends and co-workers, and anyone we encounter as we walk through life. For the most part, we are caught up in ourselves, our concerns, needs, and struggles and cannot open our hearts and lives to them. For most of us, the problem is they remain wrapped and unseen. The true beauty of the gift is not in its wrappings, but in the opening and experience of giving it. There is a certainty in the nature of things that no one can give away what they do not have!
Forgiven?
So, how do we know we are forgiven? By our forgiveness of others. Our anger, resentments, and bitterness, or more simply said, our closed souls prove that our gift has remained unopened!
Our closed hearts reveal that the problem of forgiveness is not with God’s giving but with our receiving. So, the question is, what will it take for Their forgiveness to reach us? For it to reach our broken hearts and apply its healing power?
There can be no freedom, no Life experienced or expressed with a battered, bruised, and broken heart! Forgiveness is how our souls are healed. The doorway we must enter to real relationships and the sharing of Life.
Heaven
When I first read through the Unspoken Sermons and came to The Inheritance, I was surprised and perplexed by the closing note of his symphony. The final sound of its harmony was forgiveness! There could be no heaven without it. The more forgiveness we receive and the more of it we give, the more heaven will be Heaven for us!
“Can the man or woman who is not ready to confess, not ready to pour out their regrets – can they be an inheritor in the Light? It is the joy of a true heart, of an heir of Light, of a child of God, who desires and loves an open soul. Sheer joy awaits the one who hates the wrongs he has done and can say, “I was wrong; I am sorry!”
Oh, the sweet winds of repentance, reconciliation, and atonement that will blow from garden to garden in the tender twilights of His kingdom. Whatever heaven will be like, one thing is sure. There will be eternal atonement, at-oneness, and ever-growing love. Certainly, too, whatever the divinely healed human heart desires, it will not hope in vain. The Light, which is God, and that of our inheritance as children of God, ensures this hope. For our hearts are made to desire this Light. . . .
That I, with my will and desires, are in harmony and are keeping time with His music. That I, with my thoughts and feelings, are springing from Him and not from myself. And finally that my individuality is experiencing the freedom born and belonging to His. That I am no slave to my body, my ancestry, my prejudices, or any unknown impulses, but in obedience, I am free in the law of my being. That I am living in the life-making will by which life is Life and having Life in myself!” (Paraphrase)