Psalm 130: 1 – 4
Out of the depths I have cried to You, Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the sound of my pleadings. If You, Lord, were to keep account of guilty deeds, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, so that You may be revered.
I always like finding these Old Testament examples of forgiveness. Sometimes people paint God as vengeful and judgmental. Yet, He is casting our sin to His back and forgetting it. We need only to receive it.
The psalmist speaks true, who could stand if the Lord did keep an account of all our wrong doings. Oh My! I am very grateful that He has thrown out the ledger. So, what of “Judgement Day?” That is so easy! Some people have an image of standing before God as He recites every wrong thing they did in their life. To me, that is a silly image. For one, why wouldn’t he also recite all the good things done? But then, do some people think that the Day of Judgement is like a seesaw or a balance? Do they believe that if the balance tips in favor of good deeds they will go to heaven but if it tips the other way, they get a free one-way ticket to hell?
So here is why that cannot be right. Even putting aside the blood of Jesus for one moment, God was always a forgiving God. That is why He sent Jesus. He didn’t send Him to collect the list of our wrongs but rather to save us despite our repulsiveness. Besides that, recall Isaiah 38: 17, “You have hurled all my sins behind Your back.” God has cast our sin behind Him where He cannot see it. He does not keep it before His eyes.
There is forgiveness with God. He embodies mercy and forgiveness. He is love and loves each of us and withholds none of His good gifts.
Satan is constantly whispering all of our sins of the past and things that have went wrong in our lives in our ear. This is his strategy to distract us from Jesus by having us focus on how we are not worthy. Mercy and Grace from God have to be repulsive to Satan as he knows we are free from our sins in God’s eyes and abundantly pardoned. It is Human nature for us to imagine that day of judgement and then , in our minds, start weighing our wrongs and rights. This scripture gives us the peace of mind to lay all that worry down and the desire to tell others, who are feeling sad and unworthy, the good news of our savior Jesus Christ.
Absolutely Doug. The bottom line for me is always that He is LOVE and is a good and loving Father who did everything to ensure we could spend eternity with Him.
So true! So good!