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 GOD'S WAY

Micah 7:18-20

“Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.”

The Scripture above telling of God “passing over” the transgression, the sins of His people remind me of that singular Passover event in Egypt, centuries ago, when God passed over the homes of the Israelites that had the covering of the blood of an innocent lamb painted on the doorpost and lintel of their front doors.

Israel deserved the judgment that God visited upon Pharoh and his people for ALL have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and purpose for humanity. All the Israelites needed to do was to believe God and do what He commanded them to do and they were spared death by God’s grace and covenant mercy.

Only God can pardon and take away sin. He alone sees sin for what it is. He alone can measure the height, length, and depth of sin in all its deadliness and decay. He alone can deal with it. God knows that humanity can never redeem or heal itself. What is broken can never have the capacity to fix itself. Someone outside the broken thing must come with the ability and resources to fix what is broken.

God alone has done what is necessary to rescue, redeem and restore broken humanity and to bring it into newness of life. How did God “tread our iniquities underfoot”? He did it by laying the sin of the whole of humanity for all time upon Jesus Christ as He hung dying our deserved death on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might, in Him, become the righteousness of God by God’s grace through believing and receiving His mercy.

God has removed our sin as far as the East is from the West, cast it all into the fathomless depths of the sea. We no longer have to remain slaves to sin, we can agree with God about our desperate condition, turn from and abandon sin, turn to God and in surrendering the whole of life to Him, receive His forgiveness, cleansing, and the power of the Resurrection Life of Jesus Christ to be born anew into the life and Kingdom of God.

That is God’s gift of grace in Jesus Christ. Believe and receive.




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