"THY sins be forgiven thee!" When Jesus made this bold statement to the sufferers who came asking him to have mercy upon them, what authority had he to forgive sins? How could he forgive them? We are taught in Christian Science that sins are forgiven only as they are destroyed, and how can any one destroy the sins of others? How can he bring about the mental condition in them which must accompany such a change? In Christian Science we learn, too, that to forgive never means to endure, but to do away with whatever is unlike God, to put it out of consciousness; to give the offending one a new likeness in our thought in place of the one formerly, and perhaps habitually, held of him. We can give him a true concept of himself only by holding such a concept in our own consciousness. Doing this, we exercise the same authority that the Master possessed, authority attendant upon the understanding that the true man reflects God. By seeing man in this true light, as the perfect reflection of perfect Mind, Jesus could pronounce the sin forgiven, wiped out, so far as his own consciousness was concerned. This much one can do for another. Thus far is atonement vicarious.
Mortals forgive sin only in their own consciousness, because it is there alone that they find sin. That is why our own salvation depends entirely upon our forgiveness of others. We find ourselves pardoned as we clear our mentality of others' faults. But for our dealings with our fellow-men, but for the fact that we form one great and inseparable family, we should have no false concepts to adjust, no belief that we can be wronged or hated. We often need to be forgiven for our lack of forgiving others. If we insist upon striking discords, we shall never gain a realization of the harmony of music; but, learning what the true chords are, we can by care and attention avoid striking the false ones. If, upon awakening to a sense of what man is in divine Mind, we begin at once to refuse to think of and refer to the false manifestations of mortal thought, we lift our brother in our consciousness out of a false light—we forgive him.
Since it is our false or mortal estimate of ourselves and others that causes our own inharmonies, we ourselves become harmonious as we turn from the shortcomings and dwell upon the everlasting good. One great sin, that of bearing false witness against our neighbor, falling from us, forgiveness in the scientific sense of forgiveness is realized. The power to forgive others is not limited to those who have wronged us individually, but extends to all who are in any way in bondage to error. We are often as deeply offended by wrongs done to others as by those done to ourselves. It is startling to realize that we are responsible for the double result which follows our holding in consciousness the faults of others. We not only pursue a course which would tend to bring them "into temptation" by mentally suggesting error instead of truth to their thought, but we actually bring ourselves into the same temptation, and may commit the same sin! This is what Paul meant when he wrote to the Romans, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things." Just think of it—"the same things"—the very same we have so condemned in another!
