An Amazing Family Discovery (In Your Family Too)

Love and Forgiveness

Family, (whom I dearly love each and every one of you) I have discovered a God truth that the more I consider it the more I would rank it as second only to salvation in the freedom available at application. Years and Years of deep Bible study have found me here and it is my prayer that all of you would strongly consider what I believe is the truth here.

The verse that brought it up

Jeremiah 31:34 ESV

“And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord ,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord . For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Last Wednesday I was struggling and struggling to understand this verse, it follows the “New Covenant” verse  Jeremiah 31:33 so I knew it was vital but when I read the interlinear Hebrew translation I was totally baffled because it appeared that the, “No More” at the I’ll remember their sins, “No More” had been arbitrarily added. In other words they had the Hebrew for remember and they had the Hebrew for Sin but nothing for the, no more. I went and asked my Thursday morning group no help. I read every commentary I could find, no help.

I was just stumped; then Saturday John Mark a brother and Hebrew scholar just happened to text me about the article I posted at my web site Saturday, (he was disagreeing with my Hebrew interpretation there, which is more than cool itself) so I asked him about my struggle here in Jeremiah. I already knew any struggle like this God was going to teach me. The first thing I learned was that interlinear Bibles are quite incomplete as translating every jot and tittle and that’s what I was going on. A good tool but nothing like knowing Hebrew. The second thing was worth the struggle. God spelled El or Al in Hebrew if you spell it backwards is LA and LA translated means “not”. How cool is that. Hebrew is a picture language so the opposite picture of God is “not” like the opposite of to be is not to be. That very cool word is used twice in this verse we will “not” teach and later God will “not” remember or have our sins come to His mind.

Further consideration of this verse: God and sin don’t mix so where sin is God is “not”. The curses in the Old Testament God turned His face from Israel because of sin. Sin separated man from God in the Garden and until we are sinless by the blood of Christ we can not be in His presence and live. Here God is speaking about a New Covenant and He will be with us and our sin is “Not” , again God couldn’t “keep a record of our wrongs” and dwell with us.

Now going to 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

Love keeps no record of wrongs… If we hold onto wrongs in our mind we have Godless “not” thoughts and feelings. Love \ God not only doesn’t do that it’s abhorrent perhaps impossible.

Now using mom’s recovery principal in mind we can all get some freedom. What did mom learn? You must love “yourself” at greater levels, if you take the verse, “Love your neighbor as yourself”. It’s worthless if you don’t love your self and the more you love yourself the more you can love others and God is love so you come to love more and more as you love yourself, others, God.

Similarly you must not keep a record of your “own” wrongs; “Not” if you are going to love yourself. Going deep here, if you are in Christ then God is in your heart. However, if you are holding onto “not” thoughts, records of wrongs being your own or others then God can’t get to that place in your heart. The light can’t shine in there because God can’t dwell where there is sin. Thus Jesus even put it in the Lord’s Prayer “Forgive us our trespasses etc…”

So if I kept a record of every time Mark hit me with his oversize Baby Boots and I do not give that to God and let it go, “not” remember. Now the enemy creeps in here and uses those “not” thoughts against both me and Mark.

Even worse, if I kept a record of every time I killed a frog in Grand Blanc, I did not let that go to God and remember it no more. My pride says Robby/Bruce you’re better than this you should have done better. Now the enemy has some real kindling to burn in my heart a convicted frog murderer. Do you not yourself condemn you…ahhhhhh…but God.

What is required is impossible; how can I not remember my own sin better yet yours?

I can’t,  but love can. Love keeps no record of wrongs, so any records kept are clearly not love.

I feel this  understanding is such an opportunity to let love do what it promises:

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Tags: #forgiveness