One of the great gifts
God gave us is the gift of remembering AND the ability to NOT remember!
Learning what to remember
and what not to remember is a huge part of winning the battle of the heart and
mind.
In this post and the next
I want to remind you of several things you need to remember that God has chosen
not to remember about you!
(1) HE LAID YOUR SIN UPON
JESUS - “All we like sheep have gone astray,” said
Isaiah the prophet; “we have turned – every one – to his own way; and the Lord
has laid on him the iniquity of us all” - Isaiah 53:6
Three important doctrinal terms come from this verse:
·
Substitution
– God substituted His Son for your sin. Your penalty was placed upon Him on the
cross.
·
Justification
– Sin brings the penalty of death but Jesus’ substitutionary death for you paid
the penalty and justified you in the eyes of God.
·
Penalty
Imputed to Him/Righteousness to Us – Your sin was imputed to Him and His
righteousness is imparted to you!
This
is what we read in 2 Corinthians
5:21 –
“For our sake he made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
(2) HE FORGAVE YOUR SIN - Psalm 32:5 – “I
acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will
confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my
sin.”
What
does it mean for God to “forgive” our sin? It simply means that he promises
never to hold our sin against us in order to justify our rejection or judgment.
In other words, when forgiveness has occurred there no longer exists any legal
or moral grounds on the basis of which God might condemn you or me. The
punishment that sin requires is no longer a threat because it has been laid
upon someone else, namely, our substitute Jesus Christ.
In
other words, to have our sins forgiven means that when it comes to our
salvation they simply no longer register or appear on God’s radar! They no
longer factor in any relevant or meaningful way into our eternal relationship
with him. If forgiven, our sins simply no longer exist in the mind of God to
shape or determine or govern our ultimate eternal destiny.
(3) HE CLEANSED
YOUR SIN - All
through Scripture sin is portrayed as dark and ugly and dirty. It soils and
spoils everything. It is like a deep, dark, seemingly indelible stain on our
souls. It discolors and distorts everything. Yet God appeals to us in Isaiah 1:18 with these wonderful words: “Come now, let us reason together, says the
Lord; though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though
they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”
So,
do you “feel” dirty? Does your heart ache with the stain of sin? Does guilt
darken your emotions and paralyze you in your relationship with God? It need
not! For God has “cleansed” your sin!
So,
God first laid our sin on Christ; secondly, he then forgave our sin; and
thirdly, he cleansed our sin, making us pure and acceptable in his sight.
(4) HE COVERED YOUR SIN - In Psalm 85:2 we read about how God not only
“forgave” the sins of his people but how he “covered all their sin”
Why
do you “cover” something? It may be to keep it warm or to protect it. But in
the case of our sins, God covers them in order to hide them from view, so that
no one may see them, whether it be God, you, or other people. Your sins no
longer exist out in the open for all to see. They have been forever covered
over by God through the blood of Jesus Christ and they are never again to be
visible or accessible or available for anyone to use them to condemn or judge.
(5) HE CAST YOUR SIN
BEHIND HIS BACK -
Hezekiah put it this way: “Behold, it was
for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my
life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your
back” (Isa. 38:17)
The
imagery is vivid. It is as if God takes all our sin in hand and then throws it
behind him, never to see it again, never to be influenced by it again, never
again to take it into consideration when he deals with us or hears our prayers.
He doesn’t cast it behind our backs but behind his. David said his sin was
always “before him” (Ps. 51), but when he confessed and repented God put it
behind his back. Such is the love of forgiveness.
The
Hubble Telescope has given us breathtaking pictures of a galaxy some 13 billion
lights years from earth. Yes, 13 billion light years! Remember, a light year is
6,000,000,000,000 (six trillion) miles. That would put this galaxy at
78,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles from earth! In case you were wondering, we
count from million, to billion, to trillion, to quadrillion, to quintillion, to
sextillion. So, this galaxy is 78 sextillion miles from earth.
If
you traveled 500 mph non-stop, literally sixty-minutes of every hour,
twenty-four hours in every day, seven days in every week, fifty-two weeks in
every year, with not a moment’s pause or delay, it would take you 20,000,000,000,000,000
years (that’s 20 quadrillion years) to get there! And that would only get you
to the farthest point that our best telescopes have yet been able to detect. If
the universe is infinite, as I believe it is, this would be the mere fringe of
what lies beyond.
My
point, the point of the psalmist, is that the magnitude of such distance is a
pathetically small comparison to the likelihood that you will ever be dealt
with according to your sins or repaid for your iniquities! If you were ever inclined
to pursue your transgressions so that you might place yourself beneath their
condemning power, 78,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles is an infinitesimally
small fraction of the distance you must travel to find them!
When
you choose to remember what He has chosen not to remember about your sin, you
will begin to win on the battlefield of your mind!
