How do we comfort ourselves after we sin, when we know better?

A friend asked me: How do we comfort ourselves after we sin, when we know better? Especially in the context of 2 Peter 2:20-22

It is good to feel remorse for our sin, b/c it does pain the Father and our sin is what caused Him to sacrifice His Son on our behalf (Isaiah 53). However we should not dwell on it after we have sought forgiveness b/c He removes our iniquity as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103). If we dwell in our sin afterwards it is temptation by the Evil one to try and make us forget who we have been changed into. It's like Satan is trying to pull us back to the corpse and dead body that we have left behind.

It's times like this that helps me to remember: 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This couldn't be any clearer. If we confess our sins, He will forgive us and cleanse us. Don't forget these words. Memorize them. That's what I've had to do.

It also helps me to read through Psalm 51. This is the Psalm David wrote confessing his sin and seeking God's forgiveness after he had committed adultery and murder. Remember David did these terrible things long after he was king and had served the Lord for many years. He also went on after this to continue to serve the Lord and remain in fellowship with Him. Over the years, different parts of the psalm have grown on me. Lately the vs 13 & 14: "¹³Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. ¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness" have gathered more of my attention. Not that my sin should be a positive excuse, but that by seeing my sin it forces me to come running back to my Lord, seeking His favor and then propelling me to tell others of how great He is to forgive even me, the lowliest of repeated sinners. And thus I can see God putting to good use even my sin. Not that He wants me to sin, but that He can even use my ungodliness to His purpose.

If you want to look for examples of patience with sin, Psalm 103, mentioned above, is a great one. But also just look at the whole context of the Old Testament. God could have, and probably should have, left the Israelites for forgetting Him throughout their entire history. And yet He always remains consistent. He always maintains a remnant of followers. He always returns to them to bring them to Him.

Does that hit what you were asking about?

Discussion from Google Reader

I've been having a discussion on a google shared item for the last few days. I'm reprinting here for posterity... I've changed the name of the person I'm discussing with, and added the horizontal rules to make the sides of the conversation clear... The not-me starts out next:

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Not-me:

Haha! Now only if God hadn't written Leviticus...

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you:

I'm disappointed that the author didn't point out that the atheist's resulting judgment was to be punished by God for all eternity for not repenting and believing before dying. Of course God is loving and merciful, but He's also just, and therefore He must punish law-breakers, just like an earthly judge punishes law breakers no matter what they say or do to try and worm out of it. If they didn't punish they wouldn't be just, and neither would God.

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not-me:

Don't kid yourself, the Christian god isn't just or merciful. Ask the children of the ruler Sihon: Deut (2:33-34) And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.

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you:

fascinating. you're saying God wasn't just in destroying a people who had rejected Him as God? Sounds like good grounds to me. In fact we all have rejected Him since the Garden. Its amazing mercy that He lets any of us live and breathe. Its His air after all, not ours.

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Not-Me:

That's exactly what I'm saying. God is imaginary, and justifying genocide in his name is a horrendous abuse of power. But, let's assume that god really exists for a second. All of those destroyed people went to hell, yes? How is an ETERNITY of punishment a morally acceptable form of 'justice' to any possible crime here on earth? Pol Pot doesn't deserve eternal punishment for what he did in Cambodia. The argument that the Christian god is just is false prima facie.

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you:

Ahh, so this is where your understanding is not accurate as to the nature of God. You're right that eternity of punishment for crimes committed here on earth isn't warranted. But those crimes aren't just committed here on earth. They're also committed against the Creator of the Universe. You'd be right that the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime if the person to whom the crime was committed was an equivalent human agent such as ourselves. But that's just it God isn't equivalent to us. He is infinitely above us and therefore sins committed against Him are infinitely worse than those of ours committed against each other. As a weak illustration, imagine I threatened to kill you, at worst I might get some civil suit with a restraining order or an attempted murder charge which would only put me in prison for a few months or a couple of years. If instead I threatened or was able to kill a United States President, I would be jailed for life, or put in the electric chair. See the punishment changes based on who the offense is committed against, with the more stringent punishment applied to the one offending the greater person. Even the "little sin" of Adam disobeying in the garden was enough to get him and Eve booted out forever. Because it wasn't so much that they did what God told them not to, it was that they choose to be their own gods in their defiance of His will. This is the ultimate blasphemy and a perfect and Holy God must elevate Himself above all others. Therefore their elevation of themselves above Him, deserved death. A death that God delayed until it could be carried out on His Son. In fact this death was foretold twice right in chapter 3 of Genesis. Once when God says "he will strike your heel, but he will crush his head". This is God pointing out that Satan will nip Jesus by contributing to His death, but that Jesus' death and subsequent resurrection was the death blow for Satan. Secondly God kills an animal and makes a skin covering for Adam and Eve to replace the insufficient fig-leave covering they had made for themselves. This was the first death ever. A tremendous thing. God took sin so seriously that He killed the first ever animal as a symbol of the payment necessary that His Son would come to provide for Adam and Eve later. Sin is so serious to God that only blood can pay for it. The most precious substance we have. And the debt we have incurred so great that only the most valuable blood would be acceptable to a perfect God. That blood is the shed blood of the perfect God-man sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God isn't imaginary. The empty tomb proves it, the creation around us proves it, yours and my conscience proves it. But none of those proofs will work for you until you realize that your sin is way worse than you currently think it is. Reflect for a little on how much sin you've committed (the thousands of lies you've told, the repeated blasphemies declaring that God isn't real or just, the disobedience to your parents, the lustful thoughts, the things you've stolen, etc, etc..). The Bible says that God hates sin, and that He will in no-ways leave sins committed un-punished. Please think about how bad your sin is, and then repent and believe that Jesus' death is sufficient to cover your sins. Repenting means recognizing your sin's depths and confessing them to God and then turning away from them, and by God's grace and help stopping them. If you truly repent and believe then you will see your life change as the Holy Spirit begins to drive you to want to be more like Jesus.