Forgive and FORGET = God's freedom

When Paul writes in Philippians 3:12, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus,” he’s saying, “I’m not where I want to be yet but I follow after that I may seize it.”

“Apprehend means to take hold of,” explains Columbus, Ohio preacher David Reid. “In other words, Christ Jesus had taken hold of Paul and Paul wanted to take hold of that life he knew he could walk in. He says in the next verse, [13] Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, [14] I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

“He’s saying, ‘I don’t count myself to have apprehended; I’m not there yet. But this one thing I do, ‘Forgetting those things which are behind.’ The message is we need to forget the past.

“As we go through life there’s lots of things we can ponder on, and our minds can go in a million different directions. Have you ever said anything you wish you hadn’t said?

“I’ve done that a lot and there’s times after I do something that I think, ‘Well, I wish I could hit Control Z.’ You know what that is? That’s after you mess up the document and you don’t know what you did, you just hit Control Z and undo it. It’s one of my favorite functions because it just lets you get back to where you were.

“But you can’t get back the words you just spoke. You wish, ‘Why didn’t I handle this differently?!’ and if you dwell on those things, they’ll mess you up. You can spend all of your present—all this emotion and unending guilt because of that stuff in the past.

“Think about Paul for a moment. When Paul says he was the chief of sinners, he doesn’t mean he committed more crimes or had a bigger crime organization than anyone else. He’s saying he’s the leader of the persecution of the church. When you think about Romans 10: ‘How shall they hear without a preacher?’ . . .

“I will tell you this, what I think is the most wicked thing that can be done on the earth today doesn’t involve drugs or any of the fleshly sins we think of. The most evil thing that can be done today is to inhibit the proclamation of the gospel. The gospel’s the thing that delivers people from an eternal hell. So anything that’s done to inhibit that is the most wicked thing there is. That’s why Paul says he was the ‘chiefest of sinners.’

“Do you think Paul had some guilt issues? While he’s giving his voice, consenting unto people’s deaths, persecuting them even unto strange cities . . . In other words, he’s not just mad enough that, ‘Hey, the guys in my neighborhood preaching this false gospel need to be dealt with.’ He goes to the chief priest and says, ‘Hey, give me some letters because there’s people far away I’ve got to go find and persecute.’ Paul would look back at that and have guilt.

“We have our own things in our lives that we regret and you just have to let those things go. Life is full of spilled milk. What’s the saying? ‘Don’t cry over spilled milk.’ The point is, you’ve got to let it go. I think that’s incredibly liberating because you can rehearse that stuff in your mind forever and ever and ever.

“Now, when Paul says ‘forgetting the past,’ is that just the 'Power of Positive Thinking' or is it something greater than that? Look at Colossians 2:13: [13] And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.

“If God the Father considers all of our trespasses forgiven, we need to agree with Him about that. We need to not let the past mess up the present. One of the things a lot of athletic coaches say is, ‘Get ready for the next play.’ If you play any sort of sports, you learn you can’t stew on whatever bad happens. If you sit and stew and mope, you know what? You’re going to miss the next play.

“When Paul says, ‘I press toward the mark,’ the issue is, ‘Where are you going?’ When Paul says this, he’s not talking about, ‘I’m doing this now so I can get all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in the future.’ Paul already has them and he can’t lose them. What he’s talking about is his experience of those blessings in THIS life.

*****

Micah 7:19 says, [19] He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

Preacher Richard Jordan explains, “I love that statement, ‘He will subdue our iniquities.’ He literally will subdue. He’ll take care of your sin when you can’t. He’ll lick it. He’ll beat it for you. We sing that song ‘Glorious Freedom.’

“You couldn’t get freedom from your sin no matter how hard you tried, but God Himself promises to take care of it for us. When He says He casts it into the depths of the sea, that means never to be remembered. The extent of forgiveness in this regard is total. God doesn’t forgive piecemeal and He doesn’t forgive on probation. Forgiveness is an absolute thing. The sin is gone.

“Psalm 103:12 says, ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.’ That’s total removal. If you said, ‘As far as the north is from the south,’ if you go far enough north, your compass will tell you that now you’re going south because of the way magnetic field in the earth is. But if you get in an airplane and you start going east, your compass will never tell you that you’re going west because east and west never meet.

“By the way, this is one of the verses that proves the earth is round. I can’t figure out the east and west, where they never meet, if the earth’s flat.

“When He talks about forgiveness, He’s saying, ‘I’m going to separate your sin from you so far away that you never meet them again.’ That’s what that word ‘remember’ means. Something that is a member of something is a part of it. If it’s sent away, it’s not part of you anymore. He’s saying, ‘I’ll never take your sins and make them part of your account again.’

“Isaiah 38:17 is another verse to help you. King Hezekiah is sick and recovering and says, [17] Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

“If something’s behind you, you can’t see it and when it says God ‘cast all my sins behind thy back,’ that means He’s going to take the sins and put them out of His sight where they don’t remind Him of anything. They’re not seen and they’re not things He’s going to bring up again. That’s just another way to describe the completeness of the forgiveness God provides.

“Isaiah 43:25 says, [25] I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. That’s what Acts 3:19 said: [19] Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

“He’s literally going to remove the transgressions from the record. When you blot something out, you cover it over, you erase it, you make it like it wasn’t there anymore. That’s what the issue of forgiveness is.

“Paul uses the term ‘remission.’ I’ve heard people say remission isn’t permanent, but if I remit a check to someone to pay a bill that’s pretty permanent. They say, ‘Well, you can have cancer and it not go into remission.’ These are not medical terms in the New Testament and it’s not the same idea. The word ‘remission’ is an accounting term where a payment is made and it completely satisfies the debt and now the debt doesn’t exist anymore.

“Colossians 2:13 says He’s ‘forgiven you ALL trespasses.’ How many is ALL? That would be all of the past, present and future. Your forgiveness in Christ is total and complete.

*****

“I John 1 is a verse people like to use to tell you what you need to do is practice confession every day and keep short accounts with God, because every time you sin God watches and puts a mark on the board, and if you don’t confess it, then He comes down with a Coke bottle and bops you in the head and gets even with you and gets your attention. But when you then confess, He erases it. That’s exactly the opposite of all the verses we just went through.

“I John 1:9 says, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ Tell me something, how many times can you be forgiven all of your sins? Once, or it wasn’t ALL of them. How many times can you be cleansed from ALL unrighteousness? Only once!

“By the way, he’s writing this thing to Israel. This is a circumcision epistle. It’s not for you anyway. This is no more about you and me as members of the Body of Christ then Genesis 6-7 is with its instructions for Noah to build an ark. That verse is a statement about how in Israel’s program they can have ALL their sins forgiven. That’s a salvation verse, folks.

“Romans 5:10 says, [10] For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

“To be reconciled is to be brought back, to have your status changed from being an enemy to being a friend. Reconciliation and atonement are synonyms.

"I Corinthians 7 says that if a man leaves his wife the two should be reconciled. They’ve got a split between them and then they’re brought back together. They’re put at-one together and in the English language the suffix ‘ment’ is the idea of permanence. They’re put back as one permanently. There’s a permanent rejoining, a permanent at-one-ment.

“That word ‘covered,’ if you go back in the Old Testament, is the idea of atoning. It’s the word ‘covering.’ It blotted out the sins and allowed God not to remember them anymore. When Noah covered the ark of with pitch, anybody who’s ever worked with creosote knows that that’s not temporary; it’s a permanent covering.

“That word ‘atonement’ occurs many times in the Old Testament to describe what the blood of bulls and goats did for them in type and picture. A propitiation is a sacrifice that settles the debt so people can be reconciled; they can be at one.

“Really, in the final analysis, forgiveness is the issue of freedom; the glorious liberty as we sing about, of sending the sin to the Cross and putting His life in its place.”

(new article tomorrow)