When I was in the sixth grade back in 1962, teachers wrote with white chalk on slate blackboards in each classroom. I was one of the blackboard ‘monitors.’ It was our privileged job to wipe the board with an eraser during the day and to wash it with a wet sponge at the end of the day.
When we used the eraser, shadows of chalk residue invariably remained on the slate. Sometimes you could even read pieces of the previous writing. Not until the end of the day when we used the wet sponge did every trace of the chalk disappear. It was as if nothing had ever been on the blackboard.
I think of that experience from time to time when I read what the Scriptures tell us about God's forgiveness of our confessed sins. The Greek word used by the New Testament writers – a-fay-cease – is most often best translated as the remission of sins.
I’ve written recently about this gloriously wondrous truth (see https://inhimonly.blogspot.com/2023/02/remission-of-sins-what-is-that.html), but I cannot help thinking about it now, each time I remember my past sins for which I have repented – ESPECIALLY for those sins that were utterly horrible. And that realization is, for me, full of hope.
What does remission mean in the New Testament? It means MORE than simple forgiveness of sins. When we forgive sins, they are not actually erased from the ‘ledger’ – so to speak. They remain in our memory. That’s why you and I, as fallen and fallible humans, can forgive an offense against us, but we can never really FORGET that offense. We simply choose to not bring it up again or to require the offender to somehow make it right.
However, REMISSION of sins – an act only God can perform – remission means the sins are utterly, totally, and completely erased by Almighty God and treated as if they were never there. Sort of like chalk removed by the wet sponge, God considers those confessed sins as having never been committed.
You might want to read that again. When God ‘remits’ our sins, He treats those sins as if they were never there. As if they’d never been committed!
The blood of Jesus, so much more cleansing and purifying than a wet sponge – the blood of Jesus utterly erases our confessed sins. His blood eradicates them. And that means – please get this – that means because of God's incomprehensible grace, we will never, ever face those sins again.
Never. Ever.
Christian – what confessed sins in your past still plague you? For what sins do you think God's still gonna ‘get you’? I hope what the Scripture tells you about God's remission of all traces of your sins – horrible as they might have been – I hope what Scripture tells you about God's remission of those sins will hearten you to put all thought of future punishment away from your thoughts.
God loves you. God. Loves. You. And you are more than forgiven for what you have confessed and repented. Every trace of your sins is forever gone.
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