Magic Slate or Etch-A-Sketch

 

This is an excerpt from my sermon last week. It really is an important point, which is why I now repeat it:
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In more than half-century of speaking to people about God's forgiveness, it’s been my experience that Christians have one of two views of His forgiveness. I compare those views to two child’s toys with which many of you are probably familiar – the Magic Slate and the Etch-a-Sketch.

The Magic Slate was a stiff piece of cardboard about 8 inches wide and maybe 12 inches high. The center of the cardboard was covered with a black waxy film which was then overlaid by a thin translucent sheet. When you wrote on the sheet with a stylus, the black wax behind it caused marks to appear on the thin overlay. To erase what you wrote, you just lifted the translucent film and all the writing disappeared. But you didn’t have to look too closely at the black wax underneath to see the indentations of the stylus on the black wax. They were always there.

By contrast, the Etch-A-Sketch was a box of approximately the same length and height as the Magic Slate, but the box had a glass screen coated on the underside with a metallic powder. The box had two knobs, one on the left and one on the right. By turning the knobs, a stylus under the glass moved across the screen either horizontally or vertically and caused marks to appear in the powder under the glass. To erase the marks, the user simply turned the box upside down and shook it. Doing so caused the lines to completely disappear. But unlike the Magic Slate, the stylus DID NOT leave any depressions on the glass. Once erased, the user had a completely clean surface on which to write.

When it comes to God's forgiveness of our confessed sins, I think all Christians fall into two general categories. I call them the ‘Magic Slate’ and the ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ categories.

Those in the Magic Slate category think that when they confess their sins to God that He ‘lifts’ the translucent film and our sins disappear. But – and to keep the metaphor – God can always see the traces of those sins still embedded in the black wax.

However – and this is VERY important – the Magic Slate ‘removal of sins’ is completely contrary to the way the totality of scriptures describe how God treats our confessed sins. According to His inerrant promises, when God forgives sins – the Greek word used by the New Testament writers means to ‘remit’ our sins – when God remits our confessed sins, He treats them as if they’d been written on an Etch-A-Sketch. When we confess our sins, God turns the Etch-A-Sketch upside down – again, to keep the metaphor – God turns the Etch-A-Sketch upside down and gives it a mighty shake.

When He turns the instrument right side up again, every trace of our sins – let me say that again for emphasis – EVERY trace of our sins is gone. Completely erased even from God's memory because He CHOOSES to erase those sins from His memory.

Here is Jeremiah 31:34, God promises the penitent: “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” He tells us through Micah that He casts our sins into the depths of the deepest oceans. Through the Psalmist, He assures us that He casts our confessed sins as far from us as east is from west. (See Micah 7:19 and Psalm 103:11-13)

Now, think what that means for yourself. Scripture tells us (2 Corinthians 5:17) “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

Christian, that applies not only to when we first come to Christ, but it also applies to our everyday sins for which we repent. God CHOOSES to treat them as if they never existed. He has turned them upside down and given them a great shake – and they’re all gone. Nothing remains. It is as if each time we repent, God gives us a NEW slate. A NEW beginning. A NEW start.

That is why everyone can have this attitude by which St Paul lived his life: “Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, [We] press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13b-14)

So, the question now is this: Are you a Magic Slate or a biblically grounded Etch-A-Sketch Christian? That really IS an important question.