Just what does God do with our sin? Yes, we repent and believe and are forgiven, but what about all the terrible things we’ve done, are doing, and will continue to do? Does God just ignore those? Does He get angrier and angrier as time goes on? Does He expect us to work those sins off, either now by good works or in some kind of Purgatory?
The answers to these questions are explored in Sam Storms’ new book A Dozen Things God Did With Your Sin (And Three Things He’ll Never Do). Storms walks through twelve different perspectives on penal substitution drawn from Scripture. What we see as we dig into the depths of what Christ has done in bearing God’s wrath against us in our place on the cross is that our sin is neither ignored nor continually held against us, it is forgiven as it is fully atoned for and propitiated on the cross. Because our sin is fully forgiven, God has blotted out our sin. He has cleansed us of our sin. And, yes, He has”forgotten” our sin, not in the sense of ignoring it (He is still omnipotent, after all), but rather:
“God willingly chooses not to remember. Thus, it isn’t so much that the knowledge of our sins and lawless deeds has been erased from God’s mind. Rather, God promises us that he will not remember our shortcomings and sin. He will not remind himself of our failures. And he will not remind us of them. They play no part in determining or shaping our eternal relationship with him.” (163)
This is just one example of Storms’ work. Overall, this book is excellent and absolutely worthwhile. My only objection is that somehow in a whole chapter about how God “has passed over your sin”, Storms turns to Micah as his text, rather than to, you know, The Passover. I’m honestly a little surprised at that omission, but otherwise this is a solid devotional that should be on your shelf.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO
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