I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud and your sins like a heavy mist.
Return to me, for I have redeemed you.
This sequence is the reverse of what we would expect. First forgiveness and redemption. Then the call to return.
Indeed it is because of the forgiveness that Israel is called to return.
This follows the pattern throughout Chapter 43, and most of Isaiah. Yes, there has been an exile because of Israel’s idolatry. But now the time of exile is past. God has forgiven and redeemed. He will now make a way in the desert for a return. So – “Come!” says the LORD.
Jesus repeats this sequence in the parable of the prodigal son. The father has forgiven the son long before he sees his son on the horizon, and cuts off his son’s rehearsed confession. This confounds the obedient son who stayed home. It confounds us.
While the son is returning, that return is possible only because the father has already forgiven him. The return and restoration are so much more than the son ever imagines.
“First clean up your act,” we imperiously demand of others, “then come into the fold.”
We make the same demand on ourselves.
But Jesus says just come.
John writes that before we ever loved Him, He first loved us.
The precondition to returning to God has already been satisfied. God has satisfied it Himself.
The reconciliation between God and us is not our own confession and repentance. It is the Cross.
We could not have reconciled ourselves to God if we had wanted to. It is all God’s initiative. It is all the Cross.
So come. Don’t wait until you are qualified. Or have cleaned up your act. Or become righteous enough, or worthy enough, or anything else enough.
Just come.
~~~
Beautiful, Duane. I was not the faithful son in the story, so I am grateful for Father God embracing me when I was unlovely. I experienced the unconventional “embrace me first then wash me clean then start the internal remodeling” heart of our God – the inconceivable love that would give value to the valueless, hope to the hopeless, mercy to the rebel/recalcitrant, grace for the humanly unforgiveable. I can imagine that the faithful sons can feel like their faithfulness has been wasted and goes unrecognized by a Father Who has love/grace/mercy that is so deep and wide. I try to remind myself often that our God is not human, even though He became human in the person of Christ, and that the best child of God I can be is one who allows others to meet Him in me. This requires that my humanity be subject to His nature – that my soul be led by His Spirit rather than my flesh. This is a 24/7 submission project that requires me to Come – unqualified, unclean, unrighteous, unworthy – depending upon that grace/love/mercy to make the difference.
Ah yes. Theologians used to distinguish between the ground, or basis of our salvation, and the mode of our entry into it. The cross is the ground and precedes any response that we might have. This is why for a long time it has puzzled me when people ask, “when were you saved?” Understood correctly, there is only one correct answer for all of us, and that is 2000 years ago when the Son of God died in my stead. We enter by a response -an act of repentance and faith if one is an evangelical or through baptism if one is from the Great Tradition – but the ground of our being saved is just as you say – the cross.
Because of our emphasis on the “decision for Christ”, we tend to exaggerate the significance of our actions, but long before I ever though to approach Him in repentance, He was doing the cosmic work of saving His Church.
Needed to hear this. Thanks Dad!