First of all, how far does Jesus understand salvation to take a man?  The ancient creed of the Church includes the article of belief in “the forgiveness of sins.”  There are those who lightly assume that this means, chiefly or solely, the remission of punishment for evil acts.  This raises problems enough of itself.  The whole doctrine of “Karma”, vital to Buddhism and Hinduism, is, if I understand it aright, a strong and clear warning to us that the remission of punishment is no easy matter.  Not only Eastern thinkers, but Western also, insist that there is no avoidance of the consequences of action.  Luther himself, using a phrase half borrowed from a Latin poet, says that forgiveness is “a knot worthy of a God’s aid”—­“nodus Deo vindice dignus".[31] But in any case escape from the consequences of sin, when once we look on sin with the eyes of Jesus, is of relatively small importance.  There are two aspects of the matter far more significant.

We have seen how Jesus regards sin as at once the cause and consequence of a degeneration of the moral nature, and as a repudiation of God.  Two questions arise:  Is it possible to recover lost moral quality and faculty?  Is it possible for those incapacitated by sin to regain, or to enjoy, relation with God?

When we think, with Jesus, of sin first and foremost in connexion with God, and take the trouble to try to give his meaning to his words, forgiveness takes on a new meaning.  We have to “think like God,” he says (Mark 8:33); and perhaps God is in his thoughts neither so legal nor so biological as we are; perhaps he does not think first of edicts or of biological and psychological laws.  God, according to Jesus, thinks first of his child, though of course not oblivious of his own commands and laws.  Forgiveness, Jesus teaches or suggests, is primarily a question between Father and son, and he tries to lead us to believe how ready the Father is to settle that question.  Once it is settled, we find, in fact, Father and son setting to work to mend the past.  The evil seed has been sown and the sad crop must be reaped, the man who sowed it has to reap it—­that much we all see.  But Jesus hints to us that God himself loves to come in and help his reconciled son with the reaping; many hands make light work, especially when they are such hands.  And even when the crop is evil in the lives of others, the most horrible outcome of sin, God is still in the field.  The prodigal, when he returns, is met with a welcome, and is gradually put in possession of what he has lost—­the robe, the shoes, the ring; and it all comes from his being at one with his Father again (Luke 15:22ff.).  The Son of Man, historically, has again and again found the lost—­the lost gifts, the lost faculties, the lost charms and graces—­and given them back to the man whom he had also found and brought home to God.