One of my recurrent areas of contemplation and meditation is based on the principle that I Corinthians 13 gives us an idea of what it means that God is love. Today I was thinking about, what we call forgiveness and my mind went to that last phrase in verse five.
1 Corinthians 13:5 (KJV) Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
1 Corinthians 13:5 (NASB95) does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,Notice the different understanding that the modern translation and paraphrase give that last phrase. If my theory is correct, then that last statement tells us that God does not keep a record of our sins. Now when we think about forgiveness we have no trouble with that but I’m thinking that it also reflects that God does not keep a record of our outstanding sins.
1 Corinthians 13:5 (NLT) It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
It isn’t a matter of ignoring them, or forgetting them. It’s a matter of not needing to keep a list. God knows that we are born in original sin and He knows that we have all sinned as Paul says,
Romans 3:23 (KJV) For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
For God to keep a tally of our sins would be like us going down to the ocean and continually checking to see how wet it was.
This is where the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross comes in. We are forgiven by the free choice of God, call it grace or mercy, we are not forgiven because we have gotten enough merit to deserve it. He makes that decision based on our believing that the sacrifice of Jesus was enough to pay for our sins. It’s hard for us to comprehend this because we want to believe that bigger sinners are harder to forgive, and that we are just a little sinners so we are more deserving. Not so. We all fall short, and only God’s free, active forgiveness, enabled by the blood of Jesus, is enough for us to have salvation.
If the suffering Jesus went through and His passion were not so extreme we could almost think of it as something simple like how Mommy’s kiss heals our booboos. He offers us the free gift of salvation and is waiting to heal us not because of how big the list is but because it’s the only chance we have.
That gives me a reason to rejoice this morning.
homo unius libri
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