The cost of forgiveness

Let the man be found who has undergone the shattering experience of pardoning, nobly and tenderly, some awful wrong to himself, still more to one beloved by him, and he will understand the meaning of Calvary better than all the theologians in the world.

H. R. Mackintosh, The Christian experience of forgiveness

When presented with the weight of our sins one normally responds by saying: "Why can God not just forgive sins." The standard 'evangelical' response to this is that God is Just so he cant (but he meets this demands of justice on Christ). But as Mackintosh points out, the cross is exactly what real forgiveness looks like. The point in case being that the word 'just' in front of forgive is an oximoron, it has no meaning.

To truly forgive requires two things, according to Horrace Bushnell, "first such a sympathy with the wrong-doing party as virtually takes his nature; and secondly, a making cost in the nature by suffering, or expense, or painstaking sacrifice and labour." (quoted in Christian experience of forgiveness)

Thus when we look at the cross there is no nestorian Stock exchange theology, but rather the perfect harmony of Father and Son in sympathetic identification with fallen man. In Christ God makes the "voyage of agony" that is true forgiveness.