"No Discernible Traces"

    In the movie "Remains of the Day," an English butler recounts the story of a fellow manservant in India whose lord's compound was invaded by a tiger.  After asking permission to use his lord's gun, the butler quickly, shall we say, remedied the situation.  He returned to report with quiet aplomb, "My lord, dinner will be served at the usual time.  And I am pleased to say there will no discernible traces of the recent occurrence by that time." 

 

    "He was manifested to take away our sins... As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us" (I John 3:5; Psalm 103:12).

 

    The atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ leaves "no discernible traces" of our guilt, culpability and alienation toward God when we trust in the Savior.  We still sin as believers, of course, and distrusting failure to obey can still have negative consequences in our lives.  However, our relationship with God is perfectly secure because even the most grievous sins of born again believers are not placed on our account because they were so completely placed on our Lord's account when He died on the cross. 

   

     "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord will not impute sin" (Romans 4:8). 

 

     God relates to us as a father who views our relationship with Him as inviolable as is the bond between He and the Lord Jesus: "I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:26).  Surely He will deal with us firmly as necessary, and we do well to recall that it was to and of believers that the writer of Hebrews declared, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31).  Nevertheless, our sins do not jeopardize our relationship with God because, again, He views the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus as having removed them from us beyond finding.

 

    One day there will be no discernible traces of our sins in any manner.  Our Lord will have perfectly fulfilled the will of God to "save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).  For now, no traces of our previous alienation from God exist.  Through the blood of the Lord Jesus, and by His ongoing heavenly intercession for us, we can approach and relate to God at any time, and in all circumstances (Hebrews 7:24; 10:19-22).  In times of both faithfulness and failure, the born again believer can come and must consistently come into the conscious presence of the Father who receives us by the merits of His Son.  Indeed, abundantly discernible traces of grace line the path to the throne where we shall increasingly discover the reception of love...

 

"He hath made us accepted in the Beloved."

(Ephesians 1:6)