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!
Go to VIDEO
[iv] Psalm 103:12
No comments:
Post a Comment