Last week as I reflected on yet another birthday, I pondered God’s gifts to me. The first one He brought to the forefront of my mind was forgiveness. He led me to one of my favorite forgiveness promises – I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34) – and He underscored the last phrase. It’s beyond my ability to comprehend, but His all-knowing mind chooses to delete my sins and never retrieve them….ever. God isn’t forgetful. The Ancient of Days hasn’t misplaced them. He purposefully and irretrievably removes my sin from His mind washing them away with His own blood.
From Jeremiah, He took me to other treasured places of forgiveness: Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 38:7; 43:25; and 44:22. He drew pictures of unreachable unsearchable distances, of blotted stains and vanishing mists. Then He took me to a new place in Micah 7, and I fell in love all over again.
This final chapter of Micah is set within the context of sin and guilt then culminates magnificently with forgiveness and love…
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives…? (verse 18)
Who is this God that fully pardons at no cost to me? All other gods roaming the planet and all those I place before Him are slave masters that imprison and condemn. There is no God like our God who placed all our sin on His Son and condemned and judged it once and for all.
You will again have compassion on us; You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea (verse 19).
I love the Hebrew word for compassion – racham. It’s a deep stirring of love and tender affection. When God looks at me, He is moved in His core with deep love even when I’m most unlovable and prickly. I can never exhaust His love, and His compassion for me never fails or falters – it’s brand new every morning. So, I drag myself out of bed and revel in the freshness of His racham.
Picture God walking on your sin with complete disregard then hurling the whole and totality of it into the depths of the sea. How far can God throw? To the bottomless depths of forgiven and forgotten and out of existence forever. And He will never dredge them up…so, why do we?