If He Kept a Record

If you, Yah, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared. (Psalm 130:3-4, WEB)

The psalmist asks a question with the honesty of a man who has done the math on his own life and not flinched from the total. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? He is not being dramatic for effect. He is being accurate. If God kept a running ledger of every failure and held each entry against us, no one alive could remain on his feet in front of him. The ground of guilt is level, and every man is standing on the losing side of it, whatever his reputation looks like from the outside.

But the psalmist does not stop there, and the next line is where the whole thing turns. But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. Forgiveness is the reason God does not keep that record. And notice what the forgiveness produces, according to him. It leads to fear, meaning reverence, a healthy and clear-eyed awe. You might expect that being let off the hook would make a man careless, that mercy would breed a shrug, but the opposite happens. The mercy that spares him is exactly what draws his heart back toward God in worship, because he knows precisely what he was spared from.

For you, this means the record you dread God keeping is not a record he keeps. He forgives instead, and that forgiveness is meant to pull you closer to him rather than drive you off in shame to hide. The man who really grasps that he has been forgiven does not wander away from God. He comes nearer, because he has seen what he was owed and what he was given instead, and gratitude of that size does not cool a man toward the one who showed it.

Lord, if you marked every failure I could not stand for a moment. Thank you that with you there is forgiveness. Let that mercy turn my heart back toward you in awe.