Keeping Records Of Wrong

LORD, if you kept a record of our sins,

who, O Lord, could ever survive?

But you offer forgiveness,

that we might learn to fear you. Psalm 130:3-4

THE GREAT LOVE CHAPTER of the Bible —1 Corinthians 13 —says that love “keeps no record of being wronged.” We’d really like to love our children that way, but we sometimes have very long memories in regard to past offenses. So how will we ever love like this? Psalm 130 helps us.

The psalmist was overwhelmed with a sense of God’s disapproval. He had sunk down into depths of remoteness from God. His record of repeated failure had plunged him into despair. But that’s when the Holy Spirit, through the Scripture, stirred his heart to look up. “From the depths of despair, O LORD, I call for your help” (verse 1).

The psalmist was not in denial about his sin. When he asks who could survive being in God’s presence if he kept a list of all our offenses, the implied answer is “nobody!” But the psalmist saw something larger, something more powerful than his own sin. He saw God’s generous forgiveness: “His redemption overflows” (verse 7).

From his vantage point, the psalmist couldn’t see what would make this overflowing forgiveness possible, since he knew God is perfectly just. But he put his hope in God’s unfailing love anyway. What he didn’t know at the time was that God would deal with our sin, not by pretending it didn’t exist, but by pouring out the punishment for it on his own Son. The Bible says that God “canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). The case against us —the file folder with all the facts, names, dates, photographs, and all the incriminating evidence —was nailed there, where Jesus suffered for it all.

This means that we can live and love and forgive out of the overflow. As this grace works in us, we find that we are no longer such careful record keepers of the sins and failures of our children. Just as our Father forgave us, we are able to forgive generously.

I hear your voice, Lord, giving me the good news that you have forgiven me. And I want to become as forgiving as you are. May your mercy toward me make me merciful toward ________.