Cannot hack into what has been forgiven!

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”  Hebrews 8: 12

I spent the morning walk listening to an Alistair Begg sermon on atonement. That's a
great way to grow while exercising! In going through the many aspects of what Christ
Jesus accomplished in the atonement of sin, Mr. Begg spoke of a computer analogy that
really hit home for me.

I do not know about you, but every so often I recall some of the downright horrible and
ridiculous things I did as a younger person. I could use the true excuse that I was simply
twenty-one going on fourteen, but the fact remains that some of the things I remember
both horrify me and sadden me. While I would be embarrassed to really go into detail
about many of these, I do find myself, at these times, reminding God that I am really
sorry to have acted in these ways; in a sense, I re-ask for His forgiveness. 

It has become common knowledge that once something is typed and saved on a computer,
all of the deleting one does really never truly expunges these files completely from that
computer. Somebody, somewhere has the geeek skills to retrieve things that we may
mistakenly think have been erased. It calls, certainly, for some forethought before doing
certain tasks and, certainly, some real contemplation before hitting 'send' or 'save!'

Well, I'm not going to go very far in comparing our Holy God to a computer, but, certainly,
being an all-knowing God, He would have and does have the ability to know what we are
thinking, saying, even typing. He also knows our every sin which, without the righteousness
of Christ, would still count against us. Yet, and here's the amazing part, with the
atoning sacrifice of Jesus, God could very well say, when we go to Him and apologize
for past sin, "I do not have any record of that sin. I have forgiven and forgotten that and
all other sins because they have been washed clean by the very blood of my beloved
son, Jesus."

That's atonement. The price, cost and debt has already been paid by He who become
sin despite being totally without sin so that we could be forgiven, completely, for
the sins we have, are and will commit. No hacker could retrieve these nasty files,
even Al Gore would have no chance and he, after all, invented the internet. The
point is that though we remember things that we have done we'd like to take back
and erase, God, in His infinite grace, through the precious spotless lamb, does not
remember them, forever!

Praise God!