Love Doesn't Keep a Record of Wrongs
“He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:10–12)
How can we even wrap our mind around the immeasurable grace of God, that He knows every hair on our head (Luke 12:7) and yet does not recall our sin? This is His choice. The mercy and grace of His character, that when we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, our sins are left with Him at the cross. The debt of our sin is marked “paid in full”. It is finished.
Not so with humans. We have a tendency to keep a lengthy record of wrongs - all the times we were offended. How self-righteous we can be! There is no offense I can receive that would surpass the offenses I have inflicted upon my Lord. There is nothing I can experience that God has not dealt with. The many regrets we can have that plague our minds are not even a consideration to God once we have confessed and repented.
“I, I am he
who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
and I will not remember your sins." (Isaiah 43:25)
The term “to blot out” comes from the Hebrew word mâchâh, which means to erase, obliterate, or destroy. It originally referred to wiping away writing from a surface. In ancient times, ink sat on top of the material rather than soaking into it, so a sponge could remove every trace of the text. That is the picture here: our sin is wiped away so completely that no trace of it remains.
Notice in Isaiah 43:25 we see a reason why, it is for His own sake. There is no “A-Team” that somehow deserves this amount of mercy. It is the unmerited favor of the Lord to show us His character through His amazing grace to us in this way. He blots out our sin because of who HE is, and God in the business of writing a new story on a blank page that has been wiped clean by the blood of Jesus.
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:10–12)
How can we even wrap our mind around the immeasurable grace of God, that He knows every hair on our head (Luke 12:7) and yet does not recall our sin? This is His choice. The mercy and grace of His character, that when we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, our sins are left with Him at the cross. The debt of our sin is marked “paid in full”. It is finished.
Not so with humans. We have a tendency to keep a lengthy record of wrongs - all the times we were offended. How self-righteous we can be! There is no offense I can receive that would surpass the offenses I have inflicted upon my Lord. There is nothing I can experience that God has not dealt with. The many regrets we can have that plague our minds are not even a consideration to God once we have confessed and repented.
“I, I am he
who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
and I will not remember your sins." (Isaiah 43:25)
The term “to blot out” comes from the Hebrew word mâchâh, which means to erase, obliterate, or destroy. It originally referred to wiping away writing from a surface. In ancient times, ink sat on top of the material rather than soaking into it, so a sponge could remove every trace of the text. That is the picture here: our sin is wiped away so completely that no trace of it remains.
Notice in Isaiah 43:25 we see a reason why, it is for His own sake. There is no “A-Team” that somehow deserves this amount of mercy. It is the unmerited favor of the Lord to show us His character through His amazing grace to us in this way. He blots out our sin because of who HE is, and God in the business of writing a new story on a blank page that has been wiped clean by the blood of Jesus.
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