We encounter here a false antithesis in a matter of spirit and life. Forgiveness and punishment in God or in the man of God can neither be antithetical nor need to be reconciled. In the life of love they are not divided. God, who is love as he is spirit and life, forgives and condemns by one consistent act of love. There is no immoral condonation in his forgiveness, no vindictiveness about his punishment. And this the Christian knows both by his own experience and by the life and lessons of his redeeming Lord. 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.' No true Christian would have it otherwise.
'If forgiveness means—as it properly does—the wise and patient care for the criminal's welfare, for his regeneration and recovery into the life of a good society, then there is no distinction whatever between forgiveness and punishment.' That, precisely, is what forgiveness ought to be made to mean, and punishment likewise. But again we see in a mirror darkly and are confused by our history and our own shortcomings. Therefore even Christians misjudge God, or make for themselves 'broken cisterns'—a false God who is no fountain of living waters, pouring forth a never-failing, self-consistent, self-giving love; but a judge, a king, a despot, after the pattern of the world, a God aloof administering punishment or forgiveness, both alike unworthy and misplaced. There is no difficulty at all in this question of punishment and forgiveness if we remember perfect love and its aim, as Jesus shows them.
Moreover, we must bear in mind, nothing about God who 'is spirit' is either an artifice or a machine. So his punishments, his expressed condemnations, are never artificial, never mechanical. They arise 'naturally,' as we say; and in large part we provide them, we men, ourselves. There are certain 'natural' consequences, miscalled punishments, which are entailed upon the body as, for instance, when a child puts his hand into the fire or a man disregards what we call the 'laws' of health. The due and true moral punishment of persons by persons is just as natural. The nature of persons is spiritual in the order of their uplifted life, and is one with that life. Their nature is, in fact, no other than that life and those persons. We cannot separate, though we may sometimes in word distinguish, between the man and his nature. Consequently all due and right punishment by persons (punishment by love, which is the same as forgiveness by love) is wholly natural. It is a natural consequence of sin, the reaction against sin with which good persons or a good society must encounter it. There is no arbitrary infliction of punishment, and no arbitrary forgiveness, by the good man, the good society, or the good God. Nor should there be in regard to his own sins or sinfulness by the man who newly rejects them, the newly penitent man. He, the new man, reacts according to his new nature, and in one and the same activity should condemn and forgive himself. He must be penitent but he should not be remorseful. If he does not forgive himself as well as condemn himself, it may be because he is not humble enough and penitent enough to bear with the fact that he has deserved his condemnation.