Isaiah 43:25 ” I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.
Isaiah 43:25 “But I, yes I, am the one who takes care of your sins–that’s what I do. I don’t keep a list of your sins. (Msg)
The first thing I noticed from this scripture was that God refers to Himself 5 times, and we are not. We are, indirectly when He mentions ‘your’. The repetition was for emphasis: Your sins yes, His responsibility yes!
To all religious services I have been to, I have never heard one sermon—one like this—being preached out of this scripture. It is always centered around how we need to live holy, out of our own strength. It takes God out of the picture, and leaves us alone staring at something wrong with us that we can’t fix on our own.
The weight pulls us down. The weight for man to relieve Himself of the burden of sin is so indescribably and incessantly heavy.
In this scripture I see hope. The ‘I’ here gets rid of that almighty burden. God comes to us and says ‘I’ … He takes on the responsibility to bear the burden. He takes on the responsibility to undress our filthy rags. He takes on the responsibility to bathe us in holiness. Here He lives the lines ‘come to me all you who are weary and are heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest!’
The scriptures never at one time did say it was our responsibility to give ourselves rest. This gets rid of our pharisee-tical self righteousness… It drives us to cast our cares upon Him, for He cares for us indeed!
God says that His blotting out your sins is for His own sake. To blot means to obliterate. To obliterate means ‘to remove completely, leaving no trace; to wipe out; to destroy.’ Did you see that? COMPLETELY! No trace! DESTROY! Can you see your sins wiped out! Can you see them nonexistent? For that’s what being destroyed means!
It’s like burning a book! All evidence is blown away by the wind in ashes! Don’t accord your sin any power! It’s all gone! For His sake! How? God is all-knowing, and if you were in His position—all knowing that is—and you knew that the person you love the most was going to break your heart again, how would you cope?
Remember, that ‘all-knowing’ comprises of the future as well. Not the past alone. So, God did not only obliterate the past sin. If so, that only means Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient for those that lived in His day, but if you too can believe that a death that occurred 2000 years ago obtains you salvation, then we can confidently say that that same death obliterated your sins—even those that you haven’t yet committed—2000 years ago, in advance, before your very birth!
When men hurt us, we bear a crack in our lens when we relate with them. To love them therefore is hard. For even if we forgive them, we rarely forget. Now God made us in His image. Meaning we take this from Him. But He didn’t want to relate with us through that lens. In the Old Testament, He used this lens on the Israelites, but in the New Testament, He revised a method latter Israel had imposed on Him. He is love. And love keeps no record of wrongs done. Meaning, He can love you better without any bias.
He’s completely bleak about the faults you did! And if He can forgive and forget. That image also, we can take on. If we choose to. And it’s for our sake. If we are to indeed represent Him well as His children & love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
In conclusion; the ‘I’ is for ‘You’. God takes the responsibility to destroy your wrong, for only He has the right to judge you wrong or right. And His responsibility for ‘You’ about your transgressions, isn’t even about you, but Him—My sake—He says.
His responsibility to vanquish your sin is His joy. It’s to His advantage like I have already mentioned; to carry out His promise: to love you with an everlasting love.
Another example God gave me was that of a student being summoned to the principal’s office, or the Headmaster’s, for a dire crime they performed at school. As the student trudges up that office—heart pumping up their throat—they settle in expecting an expulsion, only for the Headmaster to adjudicate not only in their favor but also obliterating the crime.
Their face stares back in shock as the headmaster says ‘I don’t see any reason for expelling you! You’ve done no wrong! Return to your class immediately!’
Of course the accusers (the devil in this case) won’t be happy, as they wished expulsion for the student…but the principal or headmaster wields the highest power, and so it doesn’t matter what the less powers say. That is what God did. My pastor likes saying ‘He has decided to have selective amnesia as far as your sin is concerned.’
And it’s all for His sake. That He may love you without hindrance.
The only hindrance would be you lacking this knowledge. But you have it now. Your state of holiness is His responsibility. Yours is to know His role and to believe. To believe that He has done all He said He would—remembering NOT your sins! So don’t let sin guilt-trip you anymore…
In short, God wants you to know that it is His responsibility to wipe your sins and not yours. He wants you and Him to reason together (Isa 1:18), which can’t happen if sin keeps getting in the way. He wants you not to fear Him (picturing the wrath of His judgement instead of His perfect love). He wants you to approach Him boldly (Heb 4:16), that you may ask of Him nations and anything (Psalm 2:8), and be not intimidated that He won’t give them, for now you have a great understanding of what He desires for you & that if you ask He’ll give… (Unlike for the elder son in the Parable of the prodigal who thought His father never loved him so to give him just a calf, only for his father to say he’d not have been denied one if He’d asked—)
…and that you may develop a new consciousness altogether. That of His love and not of sin, which puts you in a better position of relation with the Father!
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“If God forgives us we must forgive ourselves otherwise if we don’t, it’s like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than him.” -C.S. Lewis
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