“But if you don’t do what you say, you will be sinning against God; you can be sure that your sin will
track you down. Numbers 32:23 (TMSG)
Some of God’s people didn’t want to cross Jordan. They saw what the East Bank held and begged
Moses to let them stake out their chosen place.
They knew they were required to take part in the warfare that would
secure the rest of the Promised Land, but they’d made their choice.
Moses warned them that promising to be part of God’s
plan and family was a holy thing, and failure to fulfill those promises would carry
consequences; their sin would track them down!
Most people are painfully aware of that “tracking you
down” part as being the consequence of sinning against God. We also are quick to point out our New
Testament perspective that God forgives us when we confess. Note the apostle John:
If we
claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a
clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our
sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. 1 John 1:8 - 9 (TMSG)
So….case settled, right? Even though we’ve sinned, we’ve confessed and
been forgiven; God forgets it – books closed.
Right?
We could say “right” and move on; hardly anyone would
question such a doctrine as God’s forgiveness – except for that nagging little
fact that any of us who have asked forgiveness have also still experienced
consequences of those forgiven sins.
What’s up with that?
Our sin has tracked us down!
The drug addict who asks forgiveness still deals with
craving. The thief still thinks about
stealing. A child caught in disobedience
still tries to distort the truth to head off sitting in time-out. What happened to all that forgiveness talk?
One of the problems of accepting “part” of a verse is
that we get a wrong view of the entire verse.
Even worse, we tend to pass on that view. Forgiving and forgetting is what God does,
but He will not erase what you have done. What God does with the aftermath of
forgiveness is something we tend to block out of the last part of John’s verse…purge
us of all wrongdoing.
That’s what consequences are there for – to purge, or
squeeze-out our bent towards doing wrong.
For example, you made a bad decision to exceed the
speed limit by double, but you live through the meeting with that telephone
pole. Immediately you beg God (and the traffic
judge) to forgive you. You’re sincere,
and you fully intend to change your ways – no more “lead-footing” for you…no
sir! So God forgives, forgets and won’t
bring it to the table again. The traffic
judge isn’t so magnanimous - $450 fine and 30 days in jail.
A month later you get out of the slammer and you’ve
lost your job because you didn’t show up these past 30 days. You’ve lost your license for 90 more days as
part of the judge’s original sentence, and you’ve also got that mangled pile of
junk that used to be your new Lexus. On
top of all that mangled Lexus will stay a junk-pile because you forgot to pay
your car insurance.
Whatever happened to forgiveness? Was God just playing with my head about that?
God doesn’t “play” at anything connected with
sin. What he wants to do is purge
it from your life. Dealing
with a mangled new car, no job and a financial nightmare is how we connect the
dots between our actions and the consequences.
God’s not done with us when He forgives and forgets – He
uses our behavior to continue teaching us and purging unrighteousness, so we
will stand taller in the long run. God’s
in the rehabilitation business with humans, as much as the resurrection
business.
Today…for you
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