Recently my youngest daughter, 3-year-old Jessica, stuck a small rock up her nose. I mean, wayyyyy up. The first thing I knew about it was when I suddenly heard Jessica screaming in the living room as if something was actually wrong (as opposed to that I-just-want-attention cry). I sent Ellie to check on her. Within seconds, Ellie returned, saying, “Jessica has a rock in her nose.”
A rock? I thought as I got up to go check. And then I remembered the small, nostril-sized pebbles Lindsey had found in the driveway. She thought they were cute, so she brought them into the house and set them on the coffee table. Sure enough, Jessica was standing right next to the rock collection (which was now minus one rock), wailing.
“I got a wock in my dose!” she wailed.
The rock was so far up there that I couldn’t even see it. I tried to suck it out with one of those bulb-syringes they give you in the hospital when your baby is born, but even its titanic force couldn’t dislodge the offender. It turned out we had to take her to the doctor. “I pushed it too far up there,” she told him sadly. The doctor fished it mostly out with a long metal rod that had a tiny spoon on the end. He then told her to blow (which we didn’t know she knew how to do), and the rock shot across the room. He then cleaned it off and taped it to her chart.
Problem solved. And yes, when Jessica is old enough to appreciate it, we will probably tease her with this story. But we won’t make fun of her. And there’s a big difference.
When both parties get to laugh about it, that’s teasing. When only one person thinks it’s funny, and the other person is made to feel bad about herself, that’s making fun of her. And that’s what we’ll never do.
Why? Because it’s unkind. Because when you make someone feel bad about herself, you wound her soul. And because God never makes fun of us.
Yes, He sometimes reminds us of what we’ve done for the purpose of convicting us. He may even tease us with it—and it’s tons of fun to be teased by God, because the humor is always appropriate. But He never brings up our past sins or mistakes just for the purpose of making us feel a little worse about ourselves. In fact, the Bible tells us that He removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west—in other words, to a place from which they can never accuse us again. He knows very well what we’ve done, but He doesn’t keep rubbing our faces in it. No, when He forgives, He forgives completely and will never again bring up the incident in order to hurt us.
People might do that. Sometimes, people deliberately resurrect past sins in order to cause us guilt or pain. Not God. When He says they’re gone, they’re gone. You know that thing you did, that no one knows about? Or the thing you did that everyone knows about? If you’ve repented and asked God to forgive you, those things are gone.
An old song says, “Buried in the deepest sea, yes that’s good enough for me. I shall live eternally—praise God! My sins are gone!” And that’s why God did what He did in removing our sins from us—so we can live. We who were once dead in sin can now live. And we can live not with God constantly dangling our past sins in front of our faces, but freely and fully. They’re gone. They’re really gone.
Praise God!
Psalm 103:12—As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
John 5:24—“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; [she] has crossed over from death to life.”
Ephesians 2:4, 5—But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.