Daily Manna · Day 172 · June 21
For Mine Own Sake
“I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.”
Some of us have said sorry to God for the same thing so many times that it has started to feel like filling in a form. We half suspect that God is as tired of it as we are.
So let us state the objection honestly. If God forgives this easily, does the sin matter at all? And if it does matter, how can He simply announce that He will not remember it?
Look at the reason He gives, because nobody expects it. The reason is neither that you were sorry enough nor that you finally stayed clean long enough. He says, "for mine own sake." And read the verse just before it, where God is unusually blunt: "Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities." He does not pretend their account was tidy. He says their sins loaded Him with work and wore Him out. Then in the very next breath He says, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions."
To blot out means to wipe writing off a surface. In those days ink could be sponged off a sheet so that the sheet could be used again. So the sin is not filed away for later, and it is not settled by a payment from your side. It is wiped away, and the page is made ready for use again.
That truth may offend you at first, and then it steadies you. Your forgiveness does not rest on how good your repentance is, which is a mercy, since we all know how good our repentance usually is. It rests on what God has decided about His own name. That is why it still holds on the days when your sorrow runs out.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 172 is Remembering Twice (Psalm 77:11).