He Remembers Their Sin No More
One of my favorite modern hymns is “Before the Throne of God Above.” The second verse of the song is:
When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me.
Some of you have heard my story, or least part of it. Many of you have not. The short version is that after many years of following Christ and serving in ministry I fell into a deep depression. During that depression I turned to alcohol for relief and became an alcoholic. In my alcoholism I committed crimes and serious moral sins. I lost my marriage and my ordination as a minister. I served time on probation, became homeless, and lived for two years in a rescue mission. All of that was over a decade ago.
In my fall I hurt many people and my failures cost me a great deal. But when I got to my lowest point Jesus was there waiting for me. Though I’d turned from him, he never gave
up on me. He’s been renewing me and redeeming my failures and pain ever since.
I deeply regret the hurt I caused people. There are times when shame for the wounds I caused and for the dishonor I brought to Christ, the Church, and my calling weighs heavily on me. I know that I am not alone in that. Not long after I started meeting with my mentee at Walker State Prison, he told about the shame he feels for the crimes he committed twenty years ago. In the four years I’ve been going into prisons men have often told me, many times with tears, of the acute sense of guilt and shame they feel. But I am convinced that God does not want us to live as prisoners to the guilt of sin.
One thing the Old Covenant proved is that no one is able to keep the law. Even the best of men and women fell short. Paul stated it so clearly on Romans 7:15-18, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” Left to our own ability to keep the law, everyone is lost.
And so God entered into a New Covenant with his people. In the New Covenant Jesus became our substitute taking our sin and giving us his righteousness. Therefore, God
could say, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).
We do need to own our sin and we do need to make amends wherever possible, but we ought not to perpetually wallow in shame and guilt. When my mentee told me that he
lays awake at night dwelling on the shame he feels for his past crimes, he also told me that deep down he didn’t believe that God could ever really accept him because of the things he’d done. I was able to point him to the Hebrews verse and assure him that because he is a believer, because he is in Christ, God not only forgave him, but did not remember his sins. I told him that because he is in Christ God saw him the same way that the Father saw Jesus, as his “Son whom he loved, with whom he is well-pleased”
(Matthew 3:17). That is the reality of who he is in Christ, the beloved son of God, a son with whom God is well pleased. And that is who you and I are as well. Beloved children with whom God is well pleased.
And so when I feel shame and guilt for my sins, past and present, I try to remember the words of that hymn:
When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me.
Much love, Barry