That all sins may be forgiven him who has turned to God with his whole heart... “The Lord will not reject forever; and when he has made low, he will have pity according to the multitude of his mercy. Because he will not bring low from his whole heart, neither will he reject the children of humankind.”
But all those who call their lands by their own names and have wood and hay and stubble in their thoughts; such as these, since they are strangers to difficulties, become aliens from the kingdom of heaven. Had they however known that “tribulation perfects patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope makes not ashamed,” they would have exercised themselves, after the example of Paul. He said, “I bring my body into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” They would easily have borne the afflictions that were brought on them to prove them from time to time, if the prophetic admonition had been listened to by them: “It is good for a person to take up your yoke in his youth. He shall sit alone and shall be silent, because he has taken your yoke on him. He will give his cheek to him who strikes him. He will be filled with reproaches. The Lord does not cast away forever. When he abases, he is gracious, according to the multitude of his tender mercies.” For though all these things should proceed from the enemies, stripes, insults, reproaches, yet shall they avail nothing against the multitude of God’s tender mercies; for we shall quickly recover from them since they are merely temporal, but God is always gracious, pouring out his tender mercies on those who please him. Therefore, my beloved, we should not look at these temporal things but fix our attention on those that are eternal. Though affliction may come, it will have an end; though insult and persecution, yet are they nothing to the hope that is set before us. For all present matters are trifling compared with those that are future; the sufferings of this present time not being worthy to be compared with the hope that is to come. For what can be compared with the kingdom? Or what is there in comparison with life eternal? Or what is all we could give here, to that which we shall inherit yonder? For we are “heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.” Therefore it is not right, my beloved, to consider afflictions and persecutions but the hopes that are laid up for us because of persecutions.
Is it not evident that the Lord Jesus is angry with us when we sin in order that he may convert us through fear of his indignation? His indignation, then, is not the carrying out of vengeance but rather the working out of forgiveness, for these are his words: “If you shall turn and lament, you shall be saved.” He waits for our lamentations here, that is, in time, that he may spare us those that shall be eternal. He waits for our tears that he may pour forth his goodness. So in the Gospel, having pity on the tears of the widow, he raised her son. He waits for our conversion that he may himself restore us to grace, which would have continued with us had no fall overtaken us. But he is angry because we have by our sins incurred guilt in order that we may be humbled; we are humbled in order that we may be found worthy rather of pity than of punishment.Jeremiah, too, may certainly teach us this when he says, “For the Lord will not cast off forever; for after he has humbled, he will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies, he who has not humbled from his whole heart or cast off the children of humankind.” This passage we certainly find in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and from it, and from what follows, we note that the Lord humbles all the prisoners of the earth under his feet, in order that we may escape his judgment. But the one who does not bring down the sinner even to the earth with his whole heart is also the one who raises the poor even from the dust and the needy from the dunghill. For he does not wholeheartedly bring down those he intends to forgive.
But if he does not wholeheartedly bring down every sinner, how much less does he wholeheartedly bring down someone who has not sinned with his whole heart! For as he said of the Jews, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me,” so perhaps he may say of some of the fallen, “They denied me with their lips, but in their heart they are with me. It was pain that overcame them, not unfaithfulness that turned them aside.” But some without cause refuse pardon to those whose faith the persecutor himself confessed up to the point of striving to overcome it by torture. They denied the Lord once but confess him daily; they denied him in word but confess him with groans, with cries and with tears; they confess him with willing words, not under compulsion. They yielded, indeed, for a moment to the temptation of the devil, but even the devil afterwards left those whom he was unable to claim as his own. He yielded to their weeping, he yielded to their repentance, and after making them his own lost those whom he attached when they belonged to Another.
[AD 258] Cyprian on Lamentations 3:31-33