If Thou Shouldest Mark Iniquities

Three days. Not his three days.

That is the arithmetic he has been carrying since March, and he does it accurately, because he is an accurate man and it would feel dishonest to round it down. Eleven people. Roughly three days each. Because of a thing he did that he should not have done and knew better than to do and did anyway, at the end of a long week, without checking.

Nobody was cruel about it. He would almost have preferred it if somebody had been. What happened was that people were decent, and worked the extra days, and said things like these things happen, and then it was over and everybody moved on.

Everybody except him.

He has apologized. Properly, individually, to the ones it hit hardest. He would tell you the apologies were received and that they were sincere and that as far as anybody else on earth is concerned this is a closed matter.

And every evening at about this time it opens again.

Not dramatically. It is more like a ledger being taken out. Eleven people, three days each, at the end of a long week, without checking. He goes through it and puts it away and takes it out again tomorrow.

You may have your own ledger. Something that cost other people something real, that has been forgiven by everybody involved, and that you are still keeping an account of every evening.

The question the psalm asks

Here is a two line question, and it is one of the most useful questions in the whole book.

If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?Psalm 130:3

Mark iniquities. To mark, in that sense, is to keep the record. To note it down and hold it against.

And the question is: if that is what You did, who could remain standing?

The answer is obviously nobody, and the psalm does not even bother to say so. It moves straight on to the next line, which is the one that matters.

But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.Psalm 130:4

But there is forgiveness with thee.

That is the actual state of affairs. The marking is not being done. And notice the strange reason attached: that thou mayest be feared. The forgiveness is what produces reverence, not the record keeping. A God who kept the ledger would produce despair, and despair is not the same as the fear of God and never has been.

You are standing in front of a God who is not keeping the record you are keeping. Psalm 130:3 asks who could stand if He marked iniquities and then says plainly that there is forgiveness with Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man put down a ledger nobody in heaven is holding.

Now let me be careful, and I want you to hear that I am being careful.

It cost eleven people three days each. That is real. I am not going to tell you it was not your fault, because it was, and you have said so, and you were right to. I am not going to tell you it was small, and I am certainly not going to suggest God arranged it to teach you something, because He did not and that idea does real harm.

You did something at the end of a long week without checking, and it cost people, and you apologized, and it is over for everybody except you.

You are forgiven, and the forgiveness is not a softening of what happened. The written word puts forgiveness with God as the fact that makes standing possible at all, and the Holy Spirit is not the one taking the ledger out again every evening at this time.

The honest half: the three days are not coming back. There is no version of this where the cost is undone, and anybody who told you otherwise would be lying to you.

What is available is not undoing. It is that the account is not being kept anywhere except in your own kitchen, by you, on your own authority, every evening at about this time.

And there is a part only you can do. It gets said out loud, once, without excusing it, and then it gets handed over in a sentence. The not excusing is what makes the handing over honest.