Forgiveness For His Own Sake

The Lord Blots Out Transgressions for His Own Sake

We continue through Isaiah, particularly in chapter 43 with verse 25. When you have that, go ahead and stand. I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Put me in remembrance. Let us argue together. Set forth your case that you may be proved right. Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me. Therefore, I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and deliver Jacob to utter destruction, and Israel to reviling.

Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your great mercy to us in Jesus Christ. We thank you that you have blotted out transgressions for your own sake. We ask that today you would help us to remember that you do not remember our sins.

In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, in this passage here in Isaiah, we get a wonderful truth that appears later on in scripture, repeated several times over, and that is that the Lord is one who blots out transgressions for his own sake.

He remembers our sins no more. This is quoted later by Jeremiah, or at least alluded to. And then, quoting Jeremiah by the author of Hebrews twice over, is a very important truth to know the forgiveness that we have in Jesus Christ.

Forgiveness as the Erasure of Debt

In this passage, there are a number of things that have been spoken, but most immediately, God has spoken of the people's worship. That it has been unacceptable to him, that though they have brought him things, he has not been satisfied with them, because they have wearied him with their iniquities.

The issue is not that they have failed to worship him, even though it is framed as though they have not brought him sufficient things. We see throughout Isaiah that the issue, instead, is that they have brought him things, but these sacrifices are unacceptable on account of the fact that their sins, their hypocrisy, entirely invalidates them.

They are an unrighteous people. How can they bring things before God? In the previous passage, he had said in the middle of that section, I have not burdened you, but what is the conclusion? You have burdened me with your sins.

So now we have the answer to that fact that people have burdened him with sin, and particularly the answer for God's people, that he remembers their sins, that he remembers their sins no more. He blots out their transgressions.

Transgression is another word for sin. It is going past the boundaries that God has established in his law. To blot it out is to remove it from his ledger of the things that would count in his court against man, and he frames us otherwise as not remembering our sins.

They are not remembered. If they are remembered in court, they are held against man. If they are removed and forgotten, then they are not held against man. We are a people who are in need of forgiveness.

What is forgiveness? It is simply the erasure of a debt. A lot of people use the term forgiveness very ambiguously or very imprecisely to refer to essentially good feelings about someone, or a release of bitterness, or things like that.

Forgiveness is always an erasure of debt. When you forgive someone, you are not just saying that you are not bitter towards them. You are saying that whatever duty they owe to you in the context of that forgiveness, they no longer owe to you.

A lot of people will say that they forgive someone, but they haven't actually removed any sort of debt from them. You can forgive someone of a financial debt where they owe you something because they have broken something of yours.

You can forgive someone of the duty to come and reconcile with you, for example, but that can only be done when that person comes and does reconcile with you. And a lot of people will say, well, I forgive him, but they haven't actually pursued reconciliation, so they have not released from any kind of debt.

What they've made is some kind of ostensibly true statement about themselves not having bitterness. Whether or not it's true is another question, because a lot of times when people say that without actually pursuing reconciliation, it's because they are trying to remove that duty from themselves rather than actually releasing anyone from a duty, and so therefore have they really dealt with the bitterness that they have.

This is what forgiveness is, and it's described here as being blotted out. If you imagine there's a great ledger of sins, you know, it said of Jesus in the Gospel of John that the things that he did were so many that there would not be enough ink to write them all.

The same is true of your sins. Your sins are so many that there is not enough ink to write them all. But imagine them all being written down, and what do you do with that record? How do you get access to that record?

How do you remove this? He blots it out. If you spill ink over a page, you can't read it anymore. It can't be held against you. It is gone. And we are people who have transgressed. We have transgressed against God.

As I said, transgression is going over a boundary. You can think of it as property markers where this is within God's law, and when you transgress, you are outside of God's law. Now, here's the problem, is that transgression, if you think about it in terms of this analogy of property, it's not just property boundaries, but even the right use of that property.

God is a holy God, and He would not have anything unclean on His property, and all things are His. We, by nature, apart from Jesus Christ, are unholy people. We are unclean. To come and to trample His things, to bring our muddy feet into His world, every step that we take, anything that we do that is not with the right heart before Him, as it must be, is something that is counted against us.

Even when we do that which is outwardly right, but is not with the inward faith that it ought to have, one that is perfect before God, loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, strength, all of this is sin before Him.

And, of course, there are those things which are in and of themselves outwardly sin, not just inwardly with imperfect actions such that they are good works, but not perfect before Him, but there are those things that are outwardly sin, and there are so many.

There are the sins of your youth. Contemplate all the things that you have done when you were little. A lot of people will excuse the sins of children because they are children, but if you know yourself before the Lord, none of those things are excused just because you are a child.

Those things will be held against you on that final day unless you have an answer for them, unless they are blotted out. People give themselves free passes for all kinds of things because it seems reasonable that they would commit certain kinds of sins.

You have the sins of your youth. You have the sins that you don't even understand because you are not wise enough to understand them. You have sins against one another where you have hated in your heart, where you have lusted in your heart.

You have sinned outwardly against one another. You have sinned against others. You've sinned against God. There are all these various categories of sins that you have committed. Every single one of us is guilty of every single one of these categories of sin.

And as it says in James, if you have broken one law, you've broken them all. And in your darkest moment, when you recognize how guilty before you are before God, and that weight bears on you the most, you still only know a fraction of the sins that you have committed against Him.

Even when you are the most aware of how great that ledger is, you are still only aware of a fraction of it. And it must be dealt with. But He is merciful and He deals with it. And the result of one who goes to Him for mercy and finds mercy is that that burden is removed.

Mercy, Guilt, and the Burden Rolled Away

So many people deal with this burden of guilt in so many ways. They try to justify their sins to others. And they excuse themselves in the face of others because they think that if other people acknowledge my sin as being reasonable, then I will be right.

But you're not right in God's eyes. They will try to wash away the memory of their sins. They kind of don't bring it up in their own mind. They live in denial. Why does that never work? Because the issue is not our own memory of our sins.

The issue is God's memory of sin. And His memory is perfect. It must be removed from His memory. It must be blotted out. But when He does, the burden rolls away. Just like in Pilgrim's Progress. If you've never read that book, the main character is known as Pilgrim until later on.

He's known as Christian. And as he goes to the cross, and this massive burden that he has on his back rolls away, and he finally feels that release from guilt. This is the only way he can be released from guilt, is going to Jesus Christ, knowing that He is the one who has borne sin in our place.

He is the one who has suffered the wrath of God in our place. We, to whom it is due. This is the debt. The debt that it is erased is the debt that we owe to suffer the wrath of God. We owe our own lives to God as ones who have sinned against Him.

And the misery that we will endure for all of eternity, apart from Jesus Christ, is so great. But He has, by His greatness, He bears that in place of all of His people. Everyone who comes to Him for mercy finds mercy.

And this, as it says here, is for His sake. It is not for our sake, but it is for His sake. I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake. Now the point of this, and repeatedly we see denials that is for our sake, is that we have nothing to merit such forgiveness.

There is nothing in us that is good, that would give God a reason to save us, as though we are good, as though we have done something to earn it, or even apart from earning it, that we have any kind of quality in ourselves that would be worth that kind of forgiveness.

There is nothing like that. Now this is not to deny that it is for our sake and that God loves us. Okay, there is a real love. In fact, earlier on in this chapter in verse 14, it said, Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I send to Babylon and bring them down all as fugitives.

Okay, so He has spoken of His love. So when we see in Scripture, and I know it's not said here so directly, but in parallel passages we'll look at in a moment, where it denies it is for man's sake, that is not to deny that God has love for His people.

It is out of His love that He sent His Son. But it is to say that it is not for anything that we have done. It is instead for His sake. Notice it says, I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake.

This emphasis on I, I am He, this is His identity. This is Himself, that He is the one who forgives sins. This demonstrates Him as a greater God than any of the other gods. None of the other gods can forgive sins.

He forgives sin. His grace is greater than anything. He forgives sin for His own sake. It is something that glorifies Him. Now this is something that has come up earlier in Isaiah. If you want to turn back several pages to Isaiah chapter 37, you'll see how Hezekiah spoke to the Lord when he needed deliverance from Assyria.

And Sennacherib had sent a letter to him speaking blasphemies against the Lord about how the Lord would not be able to deliver from the hands of Sennacherib. He says in verse 17 of chapter 37, Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear.

Open your eyes, O Lord, and see, and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Okay, so he starts off by saying, hear this, okay, so is his, what he's putting before the Lord is not his own righteousness.

It's rather the sins of his enemies. This is what he has hope in, is that God would recognize that he is being mocked, and for his own sake, he would defend the people. Later on in verse 35, God responds, For I will defend this city to save it for my own sake, and for the sake of my servant David.

God saves for His own sake. Just to go through several other passages, in Psalm 25, verse 7, it says, Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember me, and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.

In verse 11, For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great. Okay, for God's sake, pardon transgressions. For the sake of His goodness, pardon transgressions. In Ezekiel 36, 22, it says,.

Therefore say to the house of Israel,. Thus says the Lord God, It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.

And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. So when God talks about the mercy He's going to have for the people, He says, It's not for your sake.

It's not because you have done anything to earn this. Instead, it is for my own sake that I do this. It says later on in verse 32,. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord God, lest that be known to you.

Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. In Psalm 79, verses 8 and 9, it says,. Do not remember against us our former iniquities. Let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name deliver us and atone for our sins for your name's sake. Repeatedly, we see that God forgives for His own sake. If it's not on the basis of anything that we have done, what does it mean that it is for His sake?

What does that mean? There's two things that I would point out. First, His character and His covenant. His character. In this passage, He talks about His own identity. I, I am He. At the beginning, He says, at the beginning in verse 1, He says,.

But now thus says the Lord, He who created you, O Jacob, He who formed you, O Israel. And repeatedly, it says throughout here things about who God is. He's the creator. He's the Holy One of Israel, etc., etc.

All of these, because of who He is, demand that there be a salvation for His people in order that His people would be a holy people, in order that He would not be mocked, in order that He would be praised, in order that He would be known as greater than all the other gods, as one who forgives sins, as one who upholds His people.

This is something that is likewise on account of His covenant. I mentioned earlier that Jeremiah alludes to this passage. Jeremiah is a later prophet who cites and alludes to earlier prophets fairly frequently.

In fact, he even names Micah the prophet. So here, when he talks about God remembering our sins no more, I believe we have a lot of reason to think that He has Isaiah in mind when He is saying this. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 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 sins no more.

This is the nature of the new covenant. God, for his own sake, upholds his covenant. As it says in 1 John 1, he is faithful and just. When we confess our sins, he forgives. How is it faithful and just for God to forgive when we confess?

He's faithful and just because he is committed to us that he will forgive us when we come to him with confession. He has committed this to us by means of covenant, by means of this new covenant, through the blood of Jesus Christ, though that is not explained in detail here in Jeremiah.

Through the blood of Jesus Christ, we have a guarantee that when we come to God, because of his nature, because he is faithful, because he is holy, because he is one who forgives and is greater than all the other gods, we will be saved, we will be pardoned.

The New Covenant and the Blood of Christ

Hebrews chapter 8 quotes this whole passage. Behold, the days are coming, et cetera. It's one of the longest quotes of the Old Testament you have directly in Scripture in the New Testament. Then later on in chapter 10, it says the same thing again.

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us. For after saying, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord, and I will put my law in their hearts and write them on their minds.

Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. So how is it that there is transgression removed?

How is it that it is not remembered anymore? It is by the blood of Jesus Christ. Blood of Jesus Christ is the ink that blots out all your sin in order that it might not be remembered. God is an omniscient God.

He is one who knows everything. There is no hope of him forgetting anything, including your sins, in a most literal sense. He cannot. His knowledge is perfect. It is unchanging. There is nothing about his knowledge that can change.

And so how is it that you would have any hope of removing this from his memory? It is only by means of covenant, only by means of him committing himself not to bring these things against you as he could, as he might otherwise.

So this is all for his own sake. If you are inclined to think of this as for your own sake, primarily because of you, either in the way that ought to be denied, that is because of any merit for you. Now, clearly, if you think that that's the case, you will see your performance before God as being that thing that makes you more or less forgiven, right?

And on the days when you're doing well, you'll feel really good with God. And on days you're doing really poorly, you'll feel pretty poorly about your relationship with the Lord. Clearly, that's not gonna work.

But even if you think of your sake as being primarily just a love that is not founded in some character of God beyond just the most superficial aspects of it, you will see that, okay, well, he loves me because he's generous, but there's really not much more to it than that.

And you will still not appreciate forgiveness as you ought. You will still not anticipate mercy as you ought and go to him. But if you realize the primary reason that he forgives is for his own sake, because he is greater than all the other gods.

And this demonstrates his glory in a way greater than anything else, because that union between Christ and the church that I mentioned earlier, being the pinnacle of the new creation, the forgiveness of sins being greater than any other kind of work that he has ever done.

Because these things glorify him in such a way, and it is in that and united with that truth that he loves, you will go to him realizing he wants to forgive. This is the greatest desire in his heart to forgive because it glorifies him.

It is for his own sake. He is not only able to forgive as one begrudgingly might, as one who is loving. You know, I as an imperfect father, when my children come to me for forgiveness, a lot of times my heart isn't perfect, right?

And so I forgive them, but it's a little begrudging, right? And it takes me a while to get my spirit in the right place where, you know, my heart is right about everything. But God is a perfect father.

Okay, he does not, there's no begrudging with the forgiveness that he gives. There's no imperfection with it. There is no, it is what he wants to do beyond all other things. In fact, the reason that he has ordained that sin might come into the world is in order that he might show his love in saving his people.

This is his kindness to his people. It is for his own sake that he does this. And if you understand that it's for his own sake, you will come to him anticipating mercy as you ought. Now, if you understand that wrongly, I suppose as many people do, oh, it's for his own sake.

It's not because of anything in me. And so I'm just at the mercy of his whims because he happened to want to be forgiving on this particular day or that particular day, et cetera. Okay, if you understand this as capriciousness or something like that, or fickleness, you won't appreciate the forgiveness as you ought.

But if you understand that for his own sake, as he says, I, I am he emphasizing his own identity and that this is what he desires above all other things to make his glory known, particularly in forgiveness of sins, then you will come to him anticipating great mercy.

He will give generously. There is no reason to hold back. And as you pray to him, pray as these people do in the Psalms. Here in this passage, you have instruction in prayer. You can pray, God, not for my sake, but for your sake, forgive me.

And as you lay hold of that promise, knowing that he forgives for his own sake, you will have assurance of pardon like none other. He forgives sins for his own sake. Pray in that manner, knowing that he is not only able, but willing and exceedingly willing.

As a perfect God that is greater than all others. And let this be the mechanism or the framework in which you remember your own sins. God, as he forgets your sins, has not removed them from his memory as one who is not omniscient, but he refuses to bring them up against you.

Okay, he has blotted them out. And so it is spoken of as a functional forgetfulness. Likewise, you will not forget your sins. You know, in fact, I believe that today we are more forgetful of our sins than we will be in eternity.

A lot of people think that when we go to the next life, when we're with Christ, we'll just kind of forget all our sins because that'll be too traumatic a memory. One of the pictures in Isaiah to speak of memories is that it'll be like a dream.

Okay, a dream is something where you still remember the details, but it's not traumatic. Okay, it's not something where you still feel the lingering effects. This is how we'll think of our sin. We will remember it in greater detail than we even do now because it is by the remembrance in terms of history of those sins that we remember that they were forgotten in terms of being brought to court.

Remember your sins in this way. Do not live in denial of your sins. Embrace the fact that you have sinned against God. You need His forgiveness and bring that to Him expecting His forgiveness, knowing that this is what He will do.

He will abundantly forgive. And as you do, you will find your relationship with Him growing. So many people remain distant from God. They do not have the relationship with Him that they ought because they do not anticipate His mercy as they ought.

They do not understand His identity and the reason that He forgives, that it's for His own sake. It's not as though we've bound Him. It's rather that He has bound Himself. And once you recognize that and you have that appreciation, you will find Him working in you in greater measure.

As you appreciate the wonder of Christ, as you look to Him, you will find Him growing in you, not just an understanding of your own forgiveness, but even an increase in righteousness as He grows you in the Spirit, being filled with a greater gratitude in order that you would obey Him further and further and you will increase in all maturity.

It is by looking to Him and remembering what He has done and knowing that, that you will have not just assurance of salvation, but the fruit of that salvation. And this is what was promised to the people way back in Isaiah's time and what we know in greater measure than they could have then, because we know it as a truth that has been fully fulfilled.

No doubt, forgiveness of sins was given to people before the cross, yet the understanding of the mechanism by which that would happen and the full appreciation of it as we know Christ in historic detail and the Spirit is poured out in greater measure in order that we might know Him in a greater way.

You have before you an opportunity to grow close with Christ in a way that is most precious, that not many have enjoyed. Do not out of a desire to preserve your own sense of righteousness, do not out of a desire to preserve your own sense of right standing, live in denial or avoid confessing your sins to God or staying away from Him thinking that He won't be perfectly merciful, run to Him knowing that He is merciful.

I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins. Amen. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wonderful grace of Jesus Christ. We thank you for your forgiving character.

We thank you for the new covenant by which we have assurance of pardon. We pray that you would, you would send us to the cross. We pray that you would give us a great sense of our misery, that you would give us a great sense of the mercy, the willingness and ability to grant mercy as we come to you so that we would not hesitate.

In Jesus' name, amen.