It’s not unusual for people to struggle with forgiveness – forgiving others and even God’s forgiveness of them. A great Psalm to meditate in this regard is Psalm 103 – the Psalm we are being introduced in this morning’s message. During my study this week I came across the story of a man caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a large city – and while creeping along and smelling the smog he realized that his mind was also inhaling a dense cloud of “spiritual smog.” He wrote:

“Feelings of guilt filtered through my heart like toxic fumes, choking it with regret and raw memories. I was en route to an early morning breakfast, and hadn’t slept well. Too much was on my mind. Too busy. My defenses were low, and the poisonous vapors seeped in.

I recalled a cruel word that I had written about a woman who was now dead. I saw the face of a man, name forgotten, whom I had struck in a moment’s passion. I remembered my failure to witness to a neighbor who later committed suicide. Acts, thoughts, and habits, some only recently confessed to God, came to mind. I felt sick.”

Christians are often seized by guilt for sins that have been confessed and forgiven – to feel sadness, shame, lingering regret, or even depression over their sins that have already been confessed and forgiven. It’s one thing to confess sin isn’t it – it’s sometimes quite another to accept forgiveness.

In Psalm 38 David talked about his guilt overwhelming him like a burden too heavy to bear. He spoke of his wounds festering because of his sin. So appears that David, a man after God’s own heart, at times lived with regret.

But Psalm 103:12 says: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Consider that the distance between east and west is infinity – the two never meet. Charles Spurgeon wrote: “If sin be removed so far, then we may be sure that the scent, the trace, the very memory of it, must be entirely gone.”

So ponder this: when God forgives sin, He forgives it completely – as though it had never occurred. When we continue to brood over sin that God has already forgiven, we are in effect underestimating His love, doubting His grace, and discounting the scope of His pardon. It is as though we fear that the death of Jesus Christ is not adequate, that His blood is too weak to justify us – declare us innocent.

But accepting God’s forgiveness, on the other hand, aligns our thinking to God’s Word. It separates our sin from our forgiveness by the distance of infinity.

The man I quoted earlier went on to say this: “Meditating on the truth of Psalm 103:12 dispersed my noxious thoughts. As my mind cleared, so did the traffic, and I traveled on with joy.”

Beloved: may we, by God’s grace learn to do the same.