Who is a pardoning God like He? (Micah 7:18)

All 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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