For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all His judgments were before me, and I did not put away His statutes from me. I was also upright before Him, and I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore the Lord has repaid me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in His view.
Despite all his sin, David knew, in God's sight, he was righteous. And Christians can say the same thing. It's all about amazing grace.
Intentional grace. Grace that provides a right standing before God even though we don't deserve it. Grace that enables us to say with David, "I'm righteous in His sight. May we never confuse them. Ava Pennington is a writer, speaker and Bible teacher. She writes for nationally circulated magazines and is published in 32 anthologies, including 25 "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books. Learn more at avawrites. This article originally appeared at avawrites. Great Resources to help you excel in !
Prayer helps you overcome anything life throws at you. Please consider the following statements pertaining to comments posted by you and other visitors to our website:. Magazine Current Issue. Latest from :.
Does God Forget? Here's What the Bible Really Says. Please follow these guidelines before commenting on our website: Please be considerate and respectful of your fellow posters. Which is it?
Answer: The sins by which we will be judged after death will be unrepented sins. Hence when a sin is confessed and forgiveness received, it is no longer reckoned to us by God. So this is a manner of speaking wherein God no longer considers a sin that is forgiven. As for our judgment, we ought to avoid thinking of it merely as a weighing and measuring of good versus bad deeds.
But there are many who show by the way they live that they do not desire some or all of these things. They do not want to love their enemy, be generous, chaste or forgive.
God will not force anyone to live in a kingdom where these sorts of things are esteemed. The Lord, therefore, judges their rejection of his kingdom and both permits and assigns another place for them to live. We call this place hell because to reject the very one for whom our hearts are made and the things and people he loves is to choose misery. And St. So the judgment in question for one who dies in friendship with God is whether his work in us is complete. If not, imperfections are purged and sorrows and tears wiped away in that place we call purgatory, which has less of a punitive effect and more of a perfecting effect.
Answer: The Lord uses this phrase in different senses. In one sense he uses it to chide the religious leaders of his time, saying that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom before them, since they had repented cf. Mk But in this case, which you cite, the Lord is using it to remind us that not all things are as they appear. We cannot size things up only based on what this world shows. I understand that God takes away all of our guilt when He forgives our sins, and I understand that Jesus Christ has already taken the punishment for our sins through His death on the cross.
But does God really forget that we sinned in the first place? Is that even possible? As I've talked with some trust friends about this issue -- including my pastor -- I've come to believe that the answer is yes. God indeed forgets our sins and remembers them no more, just as the Bible says. Two key verses helped me gain a greater appreciation of this issue and its resolution: Psalm and Isaiah Let's begin with these wonderful word pictures from King David, the psalmist:.
I certainly appreciate that God's love is compared to the distance between the heavens and the earth, but it's that second idea that speaks into whether God truly forgets our sins. According to David, God has separated our sins from us "as far as the east is from the west. First, we do need to understand that David is using poetic language in his psalm.
These aren't measurements that can be quantified with actual numbers. But what I like about David's choice of words is that he paints a picture of infinite distance. No matter how far you travel to the east, you can always go another step. The same is true of the west.
Therefore, the distance between east and west can best be expressed as an infinite distance. It's immeasurable. And that's how far God has removed our sins from us. We are completely separated from our transgressions. So, God separates us from our sins, but what about the forgetting part? Does He really purge His memory when it comes to our transgressions? Look at what God Himself told us through the prophet Isaiah :. The beginning of this passage refers to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament.
The Israelites among Isaiah's audience had apparently stopped making their required sacrifices or made them in a way that demonstrated hypocrisy , which was a sign of rebellion against God.
Instead, the Israelites spent their time doing what was right in their own eyes and piling up more and more sins against God. God says the Israelites haven't "wearied" themselves in an effort to serve or obey Him -- meaning, they haven't made much of an effort to serve their Creator and God. Instead, they spent so much time sinning and rebelling that God Himself became "wearied" with their offenses.
0コメント