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.”
We have apologised for the same thing so many times that it has started to feel like paperwork, and we half suspect God is as tired of the form as we are.
So let the objection be stated properly. If he forgives this readily, 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 it is not the one anybody expects. Not because you were sorry enough. Not because the clean streak finally reached a respectable length. For mine own sake. And read the two verses before it, where Isaiah 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 is not pretending the account was tidy. He says their sins put him to work and wore him out, and then in the next breath he says he blots them out.
Blotteth out is the word for wiping writing off a surface, the way ink was sponged from a sheet that would then be used again. Not filed. Not settled by a payment from your side. Erased, and the surface put back into service.
The truth in that offends first and steadies afterward. Your forgiveness does not rest on the quality of your repentance, which is fortunate, since we have all seen the quality of our repentance. It rests on what God has decided about his own name. Which is also why it holds on the days 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).