The Removal of Sins

Psalm 103:12- He has removed our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west.

Grace did something to our past.

I was laying in bed realizing that verse, over and over again. Realizing the craziness of what is being said.

It's not that God made my sins better. It's not that He fixed them or simply fixed their ramifications. It's that He removed them from me. He took them away. He removed it from my past. It's like He did open heart surgery and took them out... Open life surgery... What a wonderful gift!

I'm reminded of the song "Jesus Paid It All"

Oh praise the One
Who Paid my debt
And raised this life
Up from the dead

When a debt is paid, the debt no longer exists. It can't exist. If a debt exists, it hasn't been paid. So if a debt is paid, it's gone! It's been removed. And the only thing that can exist is the gratefulness and full relief of the debt no longer existing.

Too often we receive forgiveness of sins without receiving complete removal in our heart's and minds. It's easy to say, "God forgives me" and maintain a fair amount of sorrow. It's supernatural to say "My past sins no longer exist" and shout for joy because of it!

Service Pro is a clean up and restoration company. Their slogan is, "Service Pro: Like it never even happened". That's how completely God removes our sins. That's how wild this thing is. We made a crap ton mess of our lives and Jesus is like, "NOPE. REMOVED. ALL OF IT."

What keeps us going back to our past sins is an attempt to find value in them. An attempt to make them into something that's useful to us now... to justify their existence in our past so that we can appreciate them in our present, instead of disdaining them. We want to value our past sins, not throw them away (a.k.a. not let God remove them). So we hold on. But God wants us to let go.

The reality is that there's nothing good except God's grace. Grace is the only productive thing. If you've come to Christ, it's not your struggle with sin that's made you who you are today. If you've come to Christ, your failures aren't providing you with any value, whatsoever. Plenty of people struggle and sin, and it hasn't brought them any benefit at all. The only thing that's made you who you are today... The only thing that's provided value in your life is God's grace. Don't blame your past sins for the good things you have in your life now. The sin did not, in any way, provide that. That's why God's okay with removing it from you. It's actually not useful at all to Him.

It's the removal that's valuable to God. The complete removal of any and all sins is the thing that gives God glory, not the sin itself. God's forgetting of your sin is the useful thing, not your remembrance of it.

So accept and allow God to remove all your sins from you and especially from your past. Don't get stuck trying to make them into something useful when God's looking to remove them from your life.