Remembered No More

The devil, when he tempts us, encourages us to not see the sin before us as sin. When he tempted Eve to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil his sales pitch wasn’t, “This is a really bad thing to do. But I promise you you’ll be glad you did it.” His promise, “You shall be as God” was less an assurance of an illicit pleasure, more a promise of a short-cut to a good thing, a blessing that would have come in time. He offered the same kind of promise to Jesus in the desert, offering the kingdoms of the world without having to go through the cross. Having, even desiring the kingdoms of the world was not a bad thing. After all, He has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. The temptation was toward getting them without obeying the Father.

When the devil succeeds, however, his tune changes. Before he wants us to see sin as not sin; after he wants us to see sin as sin. That is, when our sin brings the calamity it inevitably does, the devil doesn’t slink away having had his lie exposed. Rather he stays right beside us, accusing us. He assures us that we are terrible sinners indeed. And therein is the truth that gets mixed with the lie.

The gospel solution to the accusations of the devil isn’t to deny the sinfulness of our sin, but to deny that the sin remains. It was real. It was terrible, cosmic treason. But if we are in Christ, it is real, terrible, cosmic treason that is no more. It is gone, forgotten, as far from us as the east is from the west. The devil, in tempting us to sin, wants us to forget that God is God. In tempting us to wallow in our guilt, he wants us to forget that God is our Father, that He loves us, delights in us, that we are the apple of His eye.

I understand why, when we seek to explain the atonement, that we often find ourselves speaking of ledgers, debts, transfers. Jesus Himself uses such language in some of His parables. But there is a great difference between what happens when my mortgage is paid off, and what happens when my sin is atoned for. In both cases I no longer owe. But in the latter I am also adopted, brought near, beloved. In the latter, because of my Elder Brother, my heavenly Father says of me, to me, to the devil, to the watching world, to every accuser, “This is My beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

We have, because of the remaining power of our inner Pelagian, this fear that if we actually believe this, embrace this, rest in this, that we will end up justifying our sins. Which actually demonstrates a deeper folly, that we think in the end we justify ourselves. We do not sin all the more that grace may abound. We do, however, rejoice that grace abounds. It is not only our only hope, but our only joy. It is precisely because I cannot earn His love that I know I can never lose His love. He remembers my sin no more. May I never forget that.