Psalm 103 has a great verse in it:
"For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is His love for those who fear Him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us."
East goes in one direction and west the other, so the distance between them is infinity. God has not only forgiven our sins, He has chosen to forget them. He won't bring them up again. As cynical as we are and as prone we are to bring up past offenses, God is not that way.
This was such a revelation to me, that when I embraced its truth and tried to assimilate it into my life, I decided to do something I don't normally do: I decided I was going to memorize the references of a few verses that flat-out state that God forgives and forgets. So I did.
Isaiah 38:17 ("...put all my sins behind Your back...")
Isaiah 43:25 ("...remembers your sin no more...")
Micah 7:19 ("...hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea...")
Psalm 103:12 ("...as far as the East is from the West...")
Come to find out my mind has gotten rusty (I had to look up the Isaiah verse, and I had the chapter in Micah wrong).
I think this truth is amazing and helps free us from the bondage, memory, and guilt of sin. Sometimes I remember a couple sins from my youth to give myself my own little whipping, just to humble myself and remember that I deserve much worse. It's nice to know that God doesn't hold that against me. It's amazing. Grace is sometimes just mindblowing. This is one reason why the psalmist can say things like,
"Praise the Lord, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise His Holy Name."
When you start to fathom the incredible riches of His mercy and grace, your whole being starts to resonate with praise and thanksgiving. We were made for this stuff.
It's no wonder that this Psalm also contains a reference to God restoring us:
"...so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."
It's like taking a bath in cool water to be forgiven. It's cool how baptism is the symbol God chose to use for this.
With a God like this, choosing obedience is the sweet option.
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at May 18, 2005 08:37 AMGood post Doug!
I can relate very much to these scriptures.....A few years ago i read a great book on this very subject - "Feeling Guilty,Finding Grace" by Larry Weeden....Hunt it down and read it if you can.....very liberating expansion on this subject!
Another GREAT treatise on the GREATNESS of GOD. Many thanks. I put these verses on my list of "to be memorized"