Pardoned
Who is a Pardoning God Like Thee (Micah 7:18)
A
ll my sins are dead and buried. They died along with the thieves that
died with Jesus on Calvary. But all my sins must be nailed to Christ’s
cross, and His alone. My sins, every ugly one, from the sensual to
seditious, all were there nailed to the cross. Each one caused pain
and each one caused shame as sin is always known to do, but they died
with Christ and were buried with Him.
Where Moses is buried no one knows; and no one but
God alone knows the place (somewhere far away, as far as the east is
from the west, some place in the deepest part of the sea) where my sins
have been dumped and buried. The early American Shakers refused to mark
their graves. They reasoned that the corpse is not the person, and the
person is no longer here. We need no other marker for our dead and
buried sins than that the cross of Christ.
Satan watched us sin and gladly held our coats as
we stoned Stephen along with truth and reason. Satan would love to dig
up the graves and dump the rotting corpses at our feet. At best he can
parade our bad memories before our minds in chains while suggesting we
crucify ourselves again and again. Real faith is not so easily fooled
by phantoms and quickly points to a Savior who “once suffered for
sins.” To think that is not enough is to insult God and insinuate that
we assist the Almighty or must, by acts of penance, add some sales tax to
the price that has already been paid.
We don’t know where our sins are, but we do know
where our Savior is. He is risen. He is on high. He is lifted up and
at the Father’s right hand, and He is in our heart. Like Zaccheus, we
will pay four-fold and ask forgiveness to those that sin has wronged (if
we can), but we will not drape our soul in crape for Christ indeed is
risen and in Him (although unworthy) we find ourselves forgiven.
“He will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast
all their sins into the depths of the sea.” (Mic. 7:19).
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