On rising from the dead our Saviour commissioned the apostles to "proclaim in His name repentance and remission of sins to all nations" (Luke xxiv. 47). It was thus He proposed to save the world. This proclamation is the "good news" of the gospel. The announcement meets the first need of the serious and awakened human spirit. It answers the question which arises in the breast of every man who thinks earnestly about his personal relations to God and to the laws of his being. We cannot wonder that St Paul sets the remission of sins first amongst the bestowments of God's grace, and makes it the foundation of all the rest.
Does it occupy the like position in modern Christian teaching? Do we realize the criminality of sin, the fearfulness of God's displeasure, the infinite worth of His forgiveness and the obligations under which it places us, as St Paul and his converts did? or even as our fathers did a few generations ago? "It is my impression," writes Dr. R. W. Dale,[38] "that both religious people and those who do not profess to be religious must be conscious that God's Forgiveness, if they ever think of it at all, does not create any deep and strong emotion.... The difference between the way in which we think of the Divine Forgiveness and the way in which it was thought of by David and Isaiah, by Christ Himself, by Peter, Paul, and John; by the saints of all Christian Churches in past times, both in the East and in the West; ... by the leaders of the Evangelical Revival in the last century--the difference, I say, between the way in which the Forgiveness of sins was thought of by them, and the way in which we think of it, is very startling. The difference is so great, it affects so seriously the whole system of the religious thought and life, that we may be said to have invented a new religion.... The difference between our religion and the religion of other times is this--that we do not believe that God has any strong resentment against sin or against those who are guilty of sin. And since His resentment has gone, His mercy has gone with it. We have not a God who is more merciful than the God of our fathers, but a God who is less righteous; and a God who is not righteous, a God who does not glow with fiery indignation against sin, is no God at all."