There's Nothing On That Whiteboard

“In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve.” (Jer 50:20 AV)

 

What a glorious statement!  Israel will return to her land, the Messiah will return, they will accept Him as such, and before all creation, the Messiah will declare His people pardoned.  Gone will be the remembrance of all the centuries of rejection and rebellion.  Gone will be the mention of all the times she went after other gods.  But especially, gone will be the statement of how she once rejected and crucified her Messiah.  There will be no more mention of it.  No more declaration of failure.  Only the face of their forgiveness and redemption will be relevant.  For one thousand years, her accuser will be imprisoned in hell, unable to make any accusation.  What we need to take away from this is the same is true for the saint today.  That which will be true for Israel in the future is true for the church today. And we as individual members of it.

Whiteboards are a rather new invention.  They came into being in my early adult life.  About thirty years ago or so.  Give or take a few years.  They have changed little over the years.  To use one, one must use a dry-erase marker.  The ink dries to a power.  All one has to do is wipe it off and the board is as clean as it was the day it was made.  All the ink turns to dust and it falls off.  In the old days, chalkboards were the standard.  Cleaning them was no easy feat.  No matter how well you tried to clean them, there was always chalk dust left behind.  That is unless you practically hosed them down.  Every now and again, someone might use a permanent marker on the whiteboard. Try as you may, that doesn’t completely erase.  Even the standard whiteboard cleaner doesn’t work.  The only way to remove it is to write on top of the permanent marker with a dry erase marker.  Then erase as one normally would.  Maybe, what we should do, is list all our sins on a whiteboard, read this verse, then wipe it all off!  That is exactly what the LORD did with our sin.

In a practical sense, our sins will still be mentioned.  For the purpose of walking with complete fellowship with God and others, our sin has to be mentioned, dealt with, and overcome.  However, as far as eternity goes, there is no mention of it for we have been pardoned.  God the Father has placed all our sin on the Son.  He has placed all the Son’s righteousness on us. That is the doctrine of imputation.  There is no more mention of it.  As far as the Father is concerned, for eternity’s sake, it doesn’t exist.  As we have written before, we simply do not realize just how forgiven we are.  We want to condemn ourselves and punish ourselves for things we have done.  We think that if we torture ourselves then God will accept our apology all the more.  This is an insult to the infinite nature of His divine forgiveness.  When we think of our record, we need to think of that whiteboard.  That whiteboard has absolutely no residue left behind to indicate what was once there.  It is all gone!  Not one proof or evidence of what which we have done.  It is all gone.  This is the amazing grace of God!