Thursday, April 18, 2019

Never-Ending Sins


Good Friday, April 19, 2019

“This is the new covenant I will make with my people on that day, says the Lord:  I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”  Then he says, “I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.”  And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.  Hebrews 10:16-18

Have you ever known people who treat their sins as if they’re in a revolving door of guilt that keeps coming around?  It may have been something said or done in 1935, but it is as fresh as the morning dew, come around to haunt, torture, and generally debilitate the life of Christ in that person.  It’s something of an old, annoying friend that wants to remind you that you’re so less than perfect you may as well give up trying to hear the call of God, you’re too far gone; God would never hear the prayers of someone like you.
One of the more prominent characteristics of revolving door guilt syndrome is that person’s tendency to not only dredge-up their besetting sin, they also treat your sins that way too!  Whether subtle or like a brass band on main street, you are reminded that you also are an awful sinner, and if you make it into heaven, your pinfeathers will smell like smoke!
The writer of Hebrews[iii] is quick to point out that kind of thinking is contrary to God’s ways.  When God forgives, God forgets.  What’s more, having forgiven your sin, and removed them from you as far as the east is from the west[iv] consigning them, with even the memory of it, to the depths of the sea…God has put up a sign that says NO FISHING!  Frankly, if God has declared, in keeping with His holy nature, that forgetting forgiven sins is holy, who are we to drag them up again?  Neither yours, nor anyone else’s!
For You Today
Good Friday is a time to focus on the cross.  Well, let’s do that!  What the cross accomplished is something you can’t…namely getting forgiveness.  And when God responds to a humble prayer of confession, that sin is history.
If you’re going to live-into God’s promise of forgiveness, it’s time to claim that promise every time the revolving door of guilt tries to come ‘round again.  Don’t get on that treadmill.  You’ll only tend to pull others with you; then you’ll have the mess of your own guilt, as well as judging others!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©
[iii] Many scholars accept the Apostle Paul as author
[iv] Psalm 103:12

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