He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7: 19, NKJV).
Dear God, we thank you for Your everlasting love. For blotting out our iniquities, and taking them away from us for ever. May we walk in the freedom that such a love grants us. In the precious name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
Yesterday we spoke about the making of a new year’s resolution: forgiving ourselves. From the sound of that statement it does not seem like a hard thing, but in practice, it is one of the hardest things to do. So we took some time to look at the way God deals with us; the way His pardon flows freely toward us and ends in an abundance of mercy. Today we will look at what He does with our sins and where they finally end up.
First let us take a close look at our Scripture for today. It begins with the words He will again have compassion on us. This means that this is nothing new on the part of God. He has had to have compassion on His people before. The word compassion has several meanings: to love, to show mercy, to have pity. All of these meanings are evident in God’s dealings with the children of Israel. Because of their stiff-necked attitude, they would sin against Him again and again. And again and again He would tread down (subdue) their sins.
Unlike us human beings, we tell others that we forgive them, but the minute they do something that we do not like, we have this immediate ability to un-forgive them. . This is not the case with God. He makes sure that this will never happen because when He forgives us, He sends our sins so far from Him that others, not even the individual themselves can retrieve them: He casts all our sins Into the depths of the sea.
Some good news is that the deepest part of the sea has not yet been discovered. Therefore, not even you and I can re-visit those sins. That being the case, why should these sins continue to haunt us and accuse us to the point that we cannot forgive ourselves. Should not this “Good News” that Jesus conquered, subjugated, brought into bondage, keeps under, brings into subjection (subdue) our sins – set us free forever?
Let us enter the year 2015 in the freedom that Christ purchased with His blood!