Forgiven

Christians, particularly those new to the faith, often struggle with forgiveness. They know God has forgiven them, but they have trouble believing it and trouble with forgiving themselves.

Sin has a way of crying out for punishment. To someone who does not know forgiveness, it seems that the only way to be rid of guilt and shame is to pay the price for it. If those we sin against do not retaliate, that sense of needing to be punished increases. At one time, beating myself over the head with it seemed the only option.

Besides that, admitting sin can be merely a way to ‘feel better’ rather than to accept the truth of it. At one time, I was convinced deep within that I was really not that bad. That ploy has no effect on guilt either. The next step was to punish myself with sorrow and guilt in the hope that would erase it. This does not work either.

There might be other mental gymnastics that people go through to deal with their guilt. Some bury it, or take it out on those around them. Some try to ‘repay’ by giving money, time, effort to the church with the idea that will get rid of the guilt. None of these things work.

Even if I could manage to forgive (or excuse) myself that didn’t work either. I first had to know that my sin is totally forgiven by God Himself. People might be able to do totally forgive me, but because sin is against God, it is ultimately His forgiveness that really counts. Knowing that God has pardoned me and will not hold my sins against me sets me free from guilt, and the more deeply I know His forgiveness, then forgiving myself becomes a moot point. Who am I to be angry with my sin when God is not angry?

Micah, the last book of the Old Testament, is titled by the name of the prophet who wrote it. His name is a short form of Micaiah and means “Who is like the LORD?” In the last few verses of this book, Micah uses a play on words in a part prayer, part exhortation, to describe God’s merciful forgiveness.

Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:18-19).

As my devotional reading for today says, when God takes all our sin and casts them into the depths of the sea, they never come out of those depths to witness against me. No matter what I have done and how much those sins “seem to be all alive” in me, accusing me, crying out for vengeance and punishment, God’s mercy is more powerful than my guilt.

When the Lord casts sin into the depths of the sea, those sins have “no more eyes to look at us with angry indignation, have no more tongues to speak against us in voices of accusation, have no more life in them to rise up and testify that they have been committed by us.”

Sinners have broken God’s law and are under its condemnation and curse, but because of the mercy of God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross to pay for sin, there is such a thing as a “forgiven sinner.” God’s complete forgiveness of sins sets me free from guilt, self-condemnation, and the sense of having failed both God and myself.

Without forgiveness, my sin would reduce me to a quivering and useless being, afraid of the wrath of God and beaten up by my refusal to forgive myself. Because of Jesus I am a sinner set free, looking forward to that great day when He presents me not only forgiven, but as Jude 24 says, “faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.”