Confession of sin the indispensable prerequisite for its pardon.
That this is so is shown by the evident fact that if it could have been dispensed with it would have been. For the desire of God to pardon his guilty people is, as this section shows, intense. He will not cease to seek after them even when the punishment of their sin has actually come upon them. Hence (Jeremiah 3:12) he addresses them in the lands of their exile, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Media (2 Kings 17:6), and three times (Jeremiah 3:12, Jeremiah 3:14, Jeremiah 3:22) implores them to "return." He "fills his mouth with arguments," and endeavors by every kind of assurance and promise to induce them to return. Jeremiah 3:12 : they shall be completely forgiven. Jeremiah 3:14 : they ought to return, for they are his by right, as the wife is the rightful possession of the husband. Jeremiah 3:14 : they are the object of his constant regard, so that they cannot be concealed from his eye or hindered from his help. No, though in a whole city, or tribe, or nation, there should be but "two" or even "one," still his hand would reach them there, and bring them out and restore them to Zion. Jeremiah 3:15 : and those who in days gone by had so happy rule they should greatly multiply in the land. And, better still, they should so realize and rejoice in the spiritual presence of God that they should no longer need the aid of the ancient symbols of that presence, such as the ark of the covenant of the old dispensation. Jeremiah 3:17 and Jerusalem should be so filled with the Lord's presence that they should call the city "the throne of the Lord." And the "nations" should be converted, and their wickedness be forsaken. Jeremiah 3:18 : and Judah and Israel should be one, and in unity and affection possess the land. Such were the glorious hopes with which God sought to win back his people's hearts to himself, and they conclusively show how intensely the heart of God was set upon his people's return. But eagerly desirous as God was for this restoration of his lost children to his heart and home again, he is evidently held back from indulging such affectionate promptings by considerations that could not be overlooked. What they were, the demand that he makes for confession of sin plainly shows. They are—
I. The Law of righteousness. Sin is the violation of that Law, and until due atonement and acknowledgment have been made, sin ought not to be forgiven. I may, in accordance with cur Savior's commands, refrain from inflicting punishment on one who has wronged me, even though he have not repented of his wrong; and that refraining from inflicting punishment, or from demanding what is my right, is forgiveness in the sense our Lord meant; but he did not mean, for it would be a command impossible to obey—that I should receive such a one into the same confidence and love which I bear towards a dear friend who has never deserved anything else. Therefore my forgiveness of such an unrepentant offender, though granted in accordance with our Lord's command, and well-pleasing in his sight, and the best I am capable of, is nevertheless not complete, not perfect; for perfect forgiveness, that which God would bestow upon sinful men, means far more than the remission of penalty: it means restoration to the love, the fellowship, and the confidence of God. But this cannot be apart from due atonement made on the part of the wrongdoer. The Law of righteousness, the Law written upon our hearts as well as inherent in the nature of things, forbids such forgiveness apart from the essential condition of such forgiveness.
II. And the well being of his household is that other consideration which restrains the prompting of affection to forgive sin unconditionally and from mere pity. Man is not the whole of God's household. He may be only the one sheep who has gone astray. The rest, the ninety and nine blessed ones who need no repentance. But to pardon sin without atonement would be to confound all moral distinctions, to discourage the good, and to teach the wrong-doer to regard his wrong as a very slight matter; it would be to carry the discords of earth into the presence of God, and to reproduce there the sins and sorrows of this world. Therefore let the love of God towards sinful man be inconceivably great, and it is so, still it is held back in its exercise by these considerations now named. But where sin is confessed as God demands it should be, then, as is promised here and in many other Scriptures beside, God's pardoning love can go forth and the sinner be restored to the favor, which he had lost. And the reason of this is not because the sinner's poor and inadequate confession of his sin is a sufficient atonement for the wrong he has done, but because, when he sincerely makes that confession, he is invested with the acceptableness of Christ.
For Christ has made that atonement perfectly which man can only offer in the most imperfect way; "man's repentance needing too often, to be repented of, and his very tears to be washed in the blood of Christ. But Christ looked upon sin as God looks upon it, hated it as God hates it, consented to God's judgment concerning it by bearing the penalty of it; "he bore our sins in his own body on the tree," and so made that true, that perfect confession and atonement which we can never make. And he did this in our nature, and as our Representative. So now, when we come in his Name, sincerely repenting of sin, though that repentance be inadequate in itself, yet because it is "the mind of Christ," and looks upon sin sorrowing over it as he did, our imperfect atonement is accepted in his perfect one, we have the fellowship of his sufferings, his atonement is in our measure reproduced in us, and we are made conformable to his death. Pardon thus bestowed neither violates the Law of righteousness nor is inconsistent with the well being of the whole family of God. Hence it is that, as in Jeremiah 3:13, the demand is made for confession of sin, and then of their iniquity in all its aggravated forms. Without such confession pardon cannot be bestowed. Not till the prodigal "came to himself," went to his father and said, "I have sinned," was he forgiven, notwithstanding all the yearning of the father's heart after his lost child. Now, to bring men to this looking upon their sin as God looks upon it, as the Lord Jesus looks upon it, is the object of God's disciplines, of the pain and smart which so often accompany sin, and of so much of the teaching of the Bible and of God's providential government. And those who have trusted in Christ are continually to be "looking unto Jesus," for in that trustful look is the sure guarantee of the preservation of the "mind of Christ" in them in regard to sin, and so of their forever abiding in the favor and love of God. This mind of holy hatred and sorrow on account of sin it is the especial work of God's Holy Spirit to produce in men; that Spirit who is given to them that ask his aid, more readily than even parents give to their children what those children they so much love need and ask for.—C.