There are also various ways in which the word “forgive” can be used. A man might say to his son—“My boy, I forgive you. You did not know what you were doing. I will say no more about it.” Or he might say—“My boy, I forgive you; but I must punish you, for you have done the same thing several times, and I must make you remember.” Or, again, he might say—“I am seriously angry with you. I cannot forgive you. I must punish you severely. The thing was too shameful! I cannot pass it by.” Or, once more, he might say—“Except you alter your ways entirely, I shall have nothing more to do with you. You need not come to me. I will not take the responsibility of anything you do. So far from answering for you, I shall feel bound in honesty to warn my friends not to put confidence in you. Never, never, till I see a greater difference in you than I dare hope to see in this world, will I forgive you. I can no more regard you as one of the family. I would die to save you, but I cannot forgive you. There is nothing in you now on which to rest forgiveness. To say, I forgive you, would be to say, Do anything you like; I do not care what you do.” So God may forgive and punish; and he may punish and not forgive, that he may rescue. To forgive the sin against the holy spirit would be to damn the universe to the pit of lies, to render it impossible for the man so forgiven ever to be saved. He cannot forgive the man who will not come to the light because his deeds are evil. Against that man his fatherly heart is moved with indignation.
The Displeasure of Jesus
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.
John 11:33
Grimm, in his lexicon to the New Testament, after giving as the equivalent of the word ἐμβριμάομαι in pagan use, “I am moved with anger,” “I roar or growl,” “I snort at,” “I am vehemently angry or indignant with someone,” tells us that in Mark 1:43, and Matthew 9:30, it has a meaning different from that of the pagans, namely, “I command with severe admonishment.” That he has any authority for saying so, I do not imagine, and believe the statement a blunder. The Translators and Revisers, however, have in those passages used the word similarly, and in one place, the passage before us, where a true version is of yet more consequence, have taken another liberty and rendered the word “groaned.” The Revisers, at the same time, place in the margin what I cannot but believe its true meaning—“was moved with indignation.”
Let us look at all the passages in which the word is used of the Lord, and so, if we may, learn something concerning him. The only place in the gospel where it is used of any but the Lord is Mark 14:5. Here both versions say of the disciples that they “murmured at” the waste of the ointment by one of the women who anointed the Lord. With regard to this rendering I need only remark that surely “murmured at” can hardly be strong enough, especially seeing “they had indignation among themselves” at the action.
It is indeed right and necessary to insist that many a word must differ in moral weight and colour as used of or by persons of different character. The anger of a good man is a very different thing from the anger of a bad man; the displeasure of Jesus must be a very different thing from the displeasure of a tyrant. But they are both anger, both displeasure, nevertheless. We have no right to change a root-meaning, and say in one case that a word means “he was indignant,” in another that it means “he straitly or strictly charged,” and in a third that it means “he groaned.” Surely not thus shall we arrive at the truth! If any statement is made, any word employed, that we feel unworthy of the Lord, let us refuse it; let us say, “I do not believe that”; or, “There must be something there that I cannot see into: I must wait; it cannot be what it looks to me, and be true of the Lord!” But to accept the word as used of the Lord, and say it means something quite different from what it means when used by the same writer of someone else, appears to me untruthful.
We shall take first the passage, Mark 1:43—in the authorized version, “And he straitly charged him”; in the revised, “And he strictly charged him,” with “sternly” in the margin. Literally, as it seems to me, it reads, and ought to be read, “And being angry” or “displeased” or “vexed” “with him, he immediately dismissed him.” There is even some dissatisfaction implied, I think, in the word I have translated “dismissed.” The word in John 9:34, “they cast him out,” is the same, only a little intensified.
This adds something to the story, and raises the question, Why should Jesus have been angry? If we can find no reason for his anger, we must leave the thing as altogether obscure; for I do not know where to find another meaning for the word, except in the despair of a would-be interpreter.
Jesus had cured the leper—not with his word only, which would have been enough
