The God Who Does Not Weaponize Our Sins

Have you ever felt the sting of people bringing up old faults, failings, or sins that you thought had already been dealt with? Have you ever watched the deadly and divisive dominos begin falling as their spreading of gossip and slander about these things steals, kills, and destroys relationships you thought were yours forever? 

This morning I was getting to know God in a Higher/Deeper experience relating to how he deals with me regarding my sin, and I suddenly came to this realization: God does not WEAPONIZE my sins! 

Let me show you how I got there because it may very well be the journey you need to make as well. It began with this scripture: 

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.[1]

First, the question is, “Who is a God like you?” 

The answer is, “no one!!!” 

However, the effect of this reality is wonder, and worship, and praise, and relief, and thanksgiving, and peace, and joy, and rest, that this God, the one who has no counterpart in any other religion or people, is OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN!!![2] 

Second, what is it about this only true God that is the focus of Micah’s praise and worship? 

Answer: that this only and true God pardons iniquity and passes over transgression. 

Third, what is the impact on me that the God who has made sure I know him wants me to know this about him? 

Answer: that I can face how utterly sinful I am in the glory of his presence because he does not bring up my sins to condemn them, but to pardon them. 

Here is the piercing wonder for me this morning: for God to pardon my iniquities, it means he does not hold them against me. For God to pass over my transgression, it means he does not stop and build a monument to my sins so I can never forget them. 

Not only do I say, “Who is a God like you?”, but I also add, “Who is a PERSON like you?” 

Among people, and especially among those claiming to be God’s people, there is no one like our God who only addresses my iniquity to pardon it (not use it against me), and only confronts my transgressions in order to pass them over, and to let me know he is doing so. 

And then it hit me: God does not WEAPONIZE my sins! 

I’m sure you can imagine how it feels when our sins are weaponized against us. Too many of us have had people who have turned our sins against us (even sins they have imagined or manufactured). But God wants us to know this about him, that he does not weaponize our sins to club us to death with them. 

Now, if you’re wondering how “bad” our sins are, consider these scriptures: 

·         “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”[3]

·         “without faith it is impossible to please him”[4]

·         “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”[5] 

And yet, with such a hopeless measurement of what is sinful, God wants me to know my poverty of spirit, mourn my not-good-enough condition, meekly admit my failure by surrendering to Jesus’ authority, and let myself hunger and thirst for the righteousness of faith in the faith that he will satisfy me with the faith I long for![6] 

Application: I am going through a season of grieving that is every bit as real as losing loved ones. However, any self-dependent trying to fix what is broken is not by faith, therefore it is sin. Trying to get back what God has taken away is not by faith no matter how grief protests.[7] 

Which means that, somehow, in all my grieving and attachment-pain, God’s one concern is that I attach to him in faith, do only what is joining his work by faith, and leave everything else in his hands, also by faith, and all with the faith that none of my sins and failures are being held against me by him! 

I feel a big sigh of resignation. I am a grieving child who is loved in my incompleteness and immaturity. I am loved as I talk with Father about my childish ideas and perceptions while he already knows what he is doing with thoughts and intentions and ways so infinitely above my own. 

All of this is a wonder to me, and I go into this day truly wondering what he is going to do with this work of his: to silence my heart in its striving to fix my grief and to help me experience knowing him as “who is a God like you?” more than I have ever known him like this before. 

Now I must join him by letting go of all others and resting only in what he himself is doing. It is too big for me. However, knowing this is today’s blessing. And my childish grieving heart is comforted.

 

© 2022 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

---

[1] Micah 7:18

[2] I mean this only for those people who have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior so they are born-again into the adoption that is theirs forever.

[3] Romans 14:23

[4] Hebrews 11:6

[5] James 4:17

[6] Based on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-12

[7] I say this based on the book of Job where Job responded to all his losses by saying, “‘Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away; blessed be the name of Yahweh’” (Job 1:21).

Many Thoughts About God’s Thoughts About Me

 

First thought: God’s knows my thoughts so intimately that he knows the difference between my praying and my thinking, between my meditating on his word and my racing down a rabbit trail, between my surrendering to his will in patient expectation and running ahead into my preplanning propensity. 

Second thought: that I had to look up the expression, “discerns my thoughts from afar,” because it just jumped into my head. 

Third thought: looking up Psalm 139:2 expanded my awe and wonder as I read this verse: “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.” I particularly wanted to know what “discern”[1] means in the Hebrew and smiled as I knew that God knew I was wondering this! 

Fourth thought: that the whole paragraph in context blows my mind with wonder and worship at God’s word to my heart that he knows me more intimately and personally and lovingly and caringly than any human being ever could satisfy. 

O Yahweh, you have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

    you discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down

    and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

    behold, O Yahweh, you know it altogether.

You hem me in, behind and before,

    and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

    it is high; I cannot attain it.[2]         

Fifth thought: as I put this scripture alongside what I have been exploring in Ephesians 1 and Colossians 3, it emphasizes in blazing clarity that THE BATTLE IS FOR OUR MINDS!!! The whole armor of God listed in Ephesians 6 (truth, righteousness, readiness, faith, salvation, word of God, prayer, proclamation) happens in our minds. 

Sixth thought: God is emphasizing this morning that his attachment to what goes through my mind calls for deliberate and devoted attachment to what comes from his mind. This is seen in: 

·  The fact that his focus is what is going on in my mind[3]

·  The fact that the scriptures, no matter which ones, are all speaking truth in love to our minds so our minds will attach to God’s mind[4]

·  We have been given the mind of Christ in the church[5] which requires us to deliberately and willfully attach to Jesus personally so we can know the mind of Christ in the mind of the Spirit

·  And, as we let the scriptures invade our minds, they all lead us to “Set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”[6] 

Seventh thought (conclusion): whoever is winning at getting the attention of our minds determines whether our actions are the fruit of the Spirit or the fruit of the flesh.[7] Although we may irritate each other with loving challenges about what goes on in our minds, even this willingness to stay together in negative emotions is affected by who has the attention of our minds. 

Which brings me to one more thing, something I was reminded of yesterday on my prayer walk when I was praying through Colossians 3 for everyone. Although verse 3 was the one that originally drew me to this chapter (“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God”), it is so clear that the whole section[8] is Paul appealing to the minds of the believers to direct them to godly actions and behaviors. 

Which led me to this expression that so clearly is a focus on where we put our minds: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (vs 16). 

I was particularly drawn to “admonish” because it is the thing that the majority of church people (home churches included) have not wanted from me. It means, “to warn or counsel in terms of someone’s behavior.”[9] This immediately brings a replay of so many situations where my warnings have been treated with contempt, and my counsel has been utterly rejected, and with no repentance or reconciliation even after people experienced the fruit of the world, the flesh, and the devil, instead of the fruit of the word, the spirit (ours), and the Triune God they were invited to. 

As I look at what I know I am doing today (as far as anyone can know such things), I get a sense of how God is directing me to keep my thoughts on him in preparation for what I will face. I hope for divine appointments to invade my day as well because I love God’s surprises of what was on his mind for me that I had no idea about. I also expect to have to battle sarky (fleshly) thoughts in order to choose where I set my mind because these battles literally come with the territory.[10] 

However, I know I will be so blessed as I set my mind on all these things because it will increase my awe and wonder that God so intimately knows my mind and loves me through everything that goes on in there, always leading my lamby little thoughts to hear his voice and follow him where he leads. 

And, I set my mind on, “Yes, Lord!” to the glory of God and the good of his people.

 

© 2022 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

---

[1] Discern: “to understand (cognitive) v. — to perceive (an idea or situation) mentally” (Bible Sense Lexicon from Logos Bible Systems).

[2] Psalm 139:1-6 with “Yahweh” (God’s personal name) replacing “the LORD”.

[3] Philippians 4:8

[4] Romans 8:6; Ephesians 4:23

[5] I Corinthians 2:16

[6] Colossians 3:2

[7] Galatians 5:16-26

[8] Colossians 3:1-17

[9] Bible Sense Lexicon in Logos Bible Systems

[10] The larger context of my time in the word is still Paul’s focus on our battle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12 in context of Ephesians 6:10-20)

God’s “But as For Me” Clause

This is the verse I am praying through:

7 But as for me, I will look to the LORD;

    I will wait for the God of my salvation;

    my God will hear me. (Micah 7)

This is a summary of how I meditate on God’s word (give deep, serious, wondering, explorative, and prayerful thought), and how meditating on this testimony from God’s word has helped me this morning. 

“But as for me”

This tells me that, even in nations and churches that has so much corruption in them, and that are so deserving of judgment for the one and discipline for the other, God has provided a “but as for me” clause that allows us to be and live differently no matter how lonely (and scary) it may feel to do so. 

“I will look to the LORD”

While the world and the worldly church look to their idols, we are just as free to look to Yahweh in the name of Jesus Christ as were all the prophets who saw God’s judgment on the way, in the midst of its application, or in its aftermath. We cannot be stopped from setting our minds on the Spirit and fixing our eyes on Jesus except by our own willingness to look elsewhere. God’s invites us to be mentored by Micah and the other prophets to look to Jesus no matter what anyone else is doing and no matter what it costs us to do so.

“I will wait for the God of my salvation”

While we are mocked for this, Jesus’ servants are the ones who will not be ashamed in the end. And it is the end that matters. We all see how quickly time passes. Our lives truly are but a dream. The end of the wicked is so horrible that it doesn’t matter how much success they appear to have in their evil and idolatrous pursuits, we must not be them. At the same time, the end of the righteous is so gloriously wonderful and joyful that we can and must wait for our God to fulfil the completeness of our salvation.

“my God will hear me.”

Sometimes this is where we must put our hearts to rest. We cannot stop the judgment coming on the world, and we obviously cannot guarantee what any other church-folk choose to do, but we can rest in the confidence that our God does hear us and he will continue to do so even if we must bear the consequences of the judgment coming to others (like Joshua and Caleb, along with all the prophets, had to endure what others had brought on their people).

There are lots of thoughts of the personal application of this to our situations, but the testimony of Micah resonates for all God’s children. No matter what anyone does to dishonor our Lord Jesus Christ, the “but as for me” clause gives us an out. We have a way to walk in the obedience of faith to the glory of God, and even to the good of those people who are too afraid to follow him, by BEING who we are in Christ so that others will want to know how we walk in hope when the world around us is so utterly hopeless.

 

© 2022 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)