“Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” (Rom.14:9)
“It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When you make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, he shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the travail of His soul and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.” (Isa.53:10-11)
Two of the verses from the other day's Daily Light. Thank You Father. Thank You Lord Jesus. Thank You for bruising Jesus, putting HIm to grief, offering His soul for sin, and bearing our iniquities. For now you see us, Your seed, Your children bearing Your eternal, abundant life.
Thank You for justifying us--justification: “just as if I never sinned.”
I think of Janie and her memory loss. She has absolutely no memory of the two weeks before the accident. Nothing. Nada. Days and days of her life, completely forgotten. And a special day--spent laughing and swimming and sharing and having a ball with many of her senior friends at the lake earlier the day of the wreck: gone, erased from her memory. People tell her about funny things she said and how she wanted to jet ski but didn’t get to and the way she and her buddies jumped back and forth while being pulled from a boat. A marvelous day of memories--all gone.
And erased and forgotten just the day before the accident: a college visit to UNC-Chapel Hill with four of her dearest friends. We moms went too, and I enjoy telling her about what a wonderful day we had--a gorgeous summer day, a really fun tour all over the campus, seeing friends who are now at college there, asking questions about the Journalism School, eating lunch with new friends and old (and all us moms having a big time laughing and sharing)--but again, all vanished from her memory.
But, of course, there are mundane memories erased, tired memories erased, and, I’m sure, some hard memories erased. Just all completely vanished and forgotten. And Janie said all that made her feel “really wierd. It’s just so strange to have nothing. Imagine that--no memory at all of all those days and nights spent living and eating and laughing, well, and maybe crying some too. She feels real sadness about it--all those wonderful memories of the lake and her last days of summer before her senior year spent with her friends enjoying the goodness of life, and every memory has vanished, probably for good.
It made me realize what a gift our memories are. Some things we want and need to forget. Sorrowful, hard, dark, painful memories are best left forgotten--learn from them, sure, but then consign them to the dust heap of history that taught us and grew us but is now thankfully past. One of my favorite quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (that I’ve quoted all my life since I have such a wretched memory): “The ability to forget is an act of grace.” Amen. I like to quote that when I forgot a friend's name--a frequent occurrence.
But most memories, the vast overwhelming majority of memories provide us a feast of joy to be eaten and savored over and over again the rest of our lives. We are never hungry for joy if we can recall the extravagant goodness and grace of God in our lives in the past--all accessed due to the gift that He has given us in our memory banks. Yet another gift from our relentlessly giving God. Have we thanked Him?
As I thought of all this, though, and of Janie’s disappointment over completely forgetting two weeks of her life--well, not just forgetting, but losing likely forever those two weeks--God suddenly reminded me: that is what I have done with your sin. When we ask the Lord Jesus to come into our lives, forgive our sin, and be our Savior, He takes our sin and completely forgets it--no, not just forgets it, He erases it from the divine memory banks. Gone. Vanished. Forever forgotten and forgiven. Jesus bore our sins at Calvary and with His death, destroyed and deleted them from His divine, perfect memory so that we are justified--just as if we never sinned.
And in place of our erased sin, the Lord Jesus replaced it in His eternal, divine memory with His righteousness. Sin erased, righteousness replaced. Forever.
What can we say to such a Savior? There are no words. Simply worship the King who came to seek and to save His lost children. Thank You for bearing all our iniquities and forever erasing them, Lord Jesus, with Your blood. And thank You for replacing that forgotten forgiven sin with Your perfect holiness and goodness and grace and love and power and peace and joy and... we could go on and on! But replacing our brokenness and sin-sick selves with Your Holy Spirit, with infinite, eternal, glorious You.
Might we never tire of remembering that which He did in fully and forever forgetting and erasing our sin by His blood. And in remembering, might we rejoice in Him, our Justifier.
Sin erased; righteousness replaced--what a glorious exchange. To God be the glory.
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