Vol. 5, Sermon 2 - Joseph's Forgiveness of His Bretheren
By Frederick W. Robertson
Preached June 18, 1851
"And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now, therefore, fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them."-Gen. 1. 15-21.
Christianity is a revelation of the love of God-a demand of our love by God based thereon. Christianity is a revelation of Divine forgiveness-a requirement thereupon that we should forgive each other.
"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John xiii. 3 4); "Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well, for so I am. If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you" (John xiii. 13-15); "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. vi. 12); "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" (I John iv. 11); "Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Ephes. iv. 32).
Now these duties of love, forgiveness, service, are called "new commandments." But we should greatly mistake if we suppose that they are new in this sense, that they were created by the Gospel, and did not exist before. The Gospel did not make God love us; it only revealed His hove. The Gospel did not make it our duty to forgive and love; it only revealed the eternal order of things, to transgress which is our misery. These belong to the eternal order and idea of our humanity. We are not planted by Christ in a new arbitrary state of human relationships, but redeemed into the state to which we were created.
So St. John says, "I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth "-old, because of the eternal order of love; new, because shown in the light of the love of Christ. Christianity is the true life-the right humanity.
Now the proof of this is, that ages before Christ appeared, they who gave themselves up to God to be led instead of to their own hearts, did actually reduce to practice, and manifested in their lives, those very principles which, as principles, were only revealed by Christ.
Here, for instance, three thousand years before Christ, Joseph, a Hebrew slave, taught by life's vicissitudes, educated by God, acts out practical Christianity-one of its deepest and most difficult lessons. There is nothing in the New Testament more childlike than this forgiveness of his brethren. Some perhaps may be shocked at dwelling on this thought: it seems to them to derogate from Christ. This is as if they thought that they honored Christ by believing that until He came no truth was known-that He created truth. These persons tremble at every instance of a noble or pure life which can be shown in persons not enlightened by Christianity. But, in truth, this us a corroboration of Christianity. Christianity is a full revelation of the truth of life, into which every one who had been here had, in his measure, struck his roots before. It is simply "the truth, the same yesterday, to-day and forever." And all instances of such a life only corroborate the truth of the revelation.
