Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his Watergate crimes. President Ford explained that he was trying to avoid a divided country. That is an admirable motivation but it doesn’t address the victims or make anything right.
A pardon is the excusing of an offense without exacting a penalty.[1] Our legal system offers the possibility of a pardon by those in power. It is an attempt at justice, even compassion, under certain extenuating circumstances. The penalty is removed from that person and the infraction dismissed as if it hadn’t happened.
Are you looking for a pardon from God? Well, it’s not going to happen. God isn’t in the pardon business. It goes against His character.
True justice exacts a price for a wrong. It must be made right. If there is no conformity to the standard of rightness and its cost, then justice, fairness and even compassion are denied.
God, in His holy righteousness, cannot leave sin unpunished. It must not be merely overlooked, but removed through making it right, through paying the price. The penalty of sin against a Holy God is death. God’s justice wipes away sin, not through a pardon, but with Jesus paying the excruciating penalty on a cross.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Romans 3:23-24
God did not pardon me. He cannot for He is just. But He is also merciful and gracious. God paid the consequences for my sin so that I didn’t have to. He paid because justice, and His holiness, demands it. He paid because He loves me. He paid because I could not.
But the Lord is eager to be gracious to you.
He waits on high to have mercy on you,
for the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all those who long for Him. Isaiah 30:18
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