AS IF IT NEVER HAPPENED

Greetings church family!

This week I’d like to share with you an excerpt from Jonathan Cahn’s book The Book of Mysteries. This excerpt depicts a conversation between a rabbi and his student. If you are struggling with the assurance of God’s forgiveness in your life, may you be reminded of this divine blessing in reading this excerpt.

We were sitting in his study. The teacher was holding a scarlet cord. 

“I dyed it myself,” he said. “I left it in the solution for several days to make sure the dye soaked into every fiber. Do you think it’s possible to undye the cord, to make it white again?” 

“I doubt it.” 

“But it is written: ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, I will make them white as snow.’ It would be like undyeing the cord.” 

“Which would be impossible,” I said. 

“But it’s even more impossible than that. How do you make sins go from scarlet to white? Sins are sins because they’re already committed. They’re done. They’re part of the past, and the past is finished.” 

“Then the only way to alter a sin . . . would be to change the past.” 

“Yes, and yet the Scriptures are filled with the promise that God will one day wipe away sin and wash away our guilt. You can’t wipe away sin or cleanse guilt without changing the past.” 

“But it’s impossible to change the past.” 

“The first recorded miracle of the Messiah was the changing of water into wine. But wine is only wine if it’s aged. But the wine of the miracle had no past to be aged. Thus, in a sense, it had to be given a new past. If God can give a past where there was no past, then He can remove a past where there once was one.”

“So salvation,” I said, “is the undyeing of the scarlet cord.” 

“Exactly. God doesn’t just forgive the scarlet cord or pretend it isn’t scarlet. He changes its past and, by that, changes its reality. He undyes it.” 

“He can do that?” I asked.

“God brought time into existence. God can bring time out of existence.” 

“So it’s not simply that everything is the same and we’re forgiven in spite of it. It’s as if we never sinned in the first place.” 

“And even more amazing than that. It’s not just as if we never sinned but in His redemption, it has become that we’ve never sinned. In salvation, the impossible becomes the reality, the guilty become innocent, the tainted become pure, the rejected become those who were always beloved children, and our sins, which were as scarlet, become . . . as white as snow.”

Church family, isn’t it good news that, in God’s eyes, when you have received His forgiveness, it’s as if your rebellious past doesn’t even exist, as if your sin never happened in the first place? Hallelujah!!  

Go about your life today knowing that you are a forgiven child of God. Let this reality sink in to the degree that it energizes your present, and gives you an assured hope for the future!  

Go about your life knowing that God is for you, God is with you, and God loves you!

Pastor Chris

Isaiah 1:18 - “Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.”

2 Corinthians 5:21 - “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

1 John 1:9 - “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.”