Ultimate Forgiveness
I really enjoyed this next quote from Uncle Bud Robinson. As someone who sometimes struggles with feelings of guilt, these words just really spoke to me. Uncle Bud said: “The Lord wants all my sins. He said He would bury them in the depths of the sea. Then he said, “Perhaps Buddie will go diving some day and find them,” so He said: “I will separate them from him as far as the east is from the west.” Then He said: “He may fly over there when he gets his golden wings,” so He said, “I’ll beat that, Buddie, I’ll blot them out of the book of remembrance forever.”
Many Christians struggle with guilt. For one thing, sin doesn’t just drop out of our lives when we place our trust in Jesus. Yes, we no longer just run after sin thoughtlessly anymore, but our sinful natures are still at work, and we find ourselves still falling short of the glory of God. There are two extremes when it comes to dealing with this ongoing sin – we can downplay it, saying “eh, we’re just human”, and never enter the holy and sanctified life to which we are called; or we can beat ourselves up and live with shame and guilt over the sins that still rise up within us.
Forgiveness Beyond Measure
Uncle Bud’s words here really made me glad! Because he uses all these wonderful pictures from Scripture about how God’s forgiveness of our sins is complete, and we don’t need to keep feeling guilty.
First he says that God promised to bury our sins in the depths of the sea. This comes from Micah 7:18-19 – after condemning the Israelites for their awful sin, the book ends with words of hope, saying: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”
Wonderful. But Uncle Bud hears God worrying that he might go diving into the sea to find them, and so God promises to separate his sin as far as the east is from the west. This comes from Psalm 103, where we read in verse 10-12: “he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
What a beautiful picture! God not holding our sins against us, but separating our sin from us in His grace. But Uncle Bud feels that one day when he gets given the wings of an angel, he might be tempted to go fly over the east and the west and look for those sins again, and this time he hears God say that he will blot his sins out of the book of remembrance forever. We read this in the book of Isaiah, first in 43:25 “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins”, and again in 44:33 “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.”
Complete Forgiveness Granted
So my friends, have you experienced this? The way into such forgiveness is simple: place your trust in Jesus. Jesus’ death on the cross was what paid the ransom for us – He took our place and paid our price, and now we can have our sins forgiven when we believe in Him as Saviour.
And this means not just a casting away of our sins; not just a separation from our sins; but a blotting out of our sins so that our records are wiped clean.
If your faith is in Christ today, there’s no need for guilt. There’s no need for shame. Like Uncle Bud, you can discover that your sins have been blotted out of the book of remembrance, and you stand before God cleansed and forgiven. What a wonder!
