The God Who Delights to Pardon

Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity, and passes over the disobedience of the remnant of his heritage? He doesn’t retain his anger forever, because he delights in loving kindness. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities under foot; and you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:18-19, WEB)

There is a difference between a God who forgives because he must and a God who forgives because he wants to, and Micah insists it is the second one we are dealing with. Who is a God like you, he asks, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot, and cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

That word delights should stop you. God is not forgiving you through gritted teeth, tolerating you while he waits impatiently for you to shape up and stop needing so much mercy. He takes pleasure in showing it. Steadfast love is not a duty he performs reluctantly and would set down if he could; it is what he is glad to do, the thing his heart moves toward. For a man used to imagining God's forgiveness as grudging, doled out with a sigh, this recolors everything about coming back to him.

And look what he does with the sin itself. He treads it underfoot and throws it into the depths of the sea. Corrie ten Boom once added that he posts a sign there that says no fishing. You do not get to keep dredging up what he has drowned, hauling it back to the surface to examine it one more time. He is not saving it as ammunition for a later argument. He sank it on purpose, in deep water, because pardoning you is a thing he delights to do and he means for it to stay done. When you go back to that shoreline out of habit, peering into the water for what you confessed, you are looking for something he threw away gladly and has no intention of handing back.

Father, I have imagined your mercy as reluctant. Thank you that you delight to forgive. Help me leave in the sea what you have thrown there.