He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. —Psalm 103:10
The phrase “according to” occurs hundreds of times in the Bible. Many times the words are applied to the Lord himself, as in “according to His will” or “according to the grace of God.” Other times they relate to the Word of God, as in “according to the Scriptures.” The meaning can be a warning, as in judgment, with each person receiving rewards, good or bad, “according to what he has done.”
In our verse from Psalm 103 today, the word is used to remind us that God never gives us everything we deserve. Some of you may be thinking, That’s right. I’ve asked God for things and I never got them. I’m pretty sure that we could all say that we’ve had God answer no to some of our petitions for things, but remember,if He said yes, it wouldn’t be because you deserved it. He never gives us everything we deserve, and I praise Him for that, because none of what we actually deserve is good!
Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings” (Jeremiah 17:9-10).
I know that I’ve had to bear “the fruit of my doings” at times, and I’m pretty sure you’ve had to as well. But, on the other hand, none of us have ever had to suffer the full extent for the things we’ve done that were born out of a deceitful heart.
Something that I love about some of the “heroes of the faith” is that they never seemed to get too far away from their initial forgiveness. Isaiah wrote: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:5). And the apostle Paul wrote, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).
And yet, Isaiah never said, “Whoa! Look at me! I’ve seen the Lord of Hosts!” Nor did Paul say, “Hey, check me out! I’m delivered from the body of this death!”
I believe that all of us would do well to remember that God hasn’t dealt with us according to our sins and iniquities. Sins are violations of God’s law, and iniquities are moral perversities. And we wish that God would give us “what we deserve”? We should be in a constant state of thankfulness—not a mentality of personal deservedness! None of us has ever gotten everything we deserve for our violations of God’s law and our perversities. That isn’t to say that there haven’t been consequences, but even those will one day come to an end.
No one now alive has ever received from God what they actually deserved. Someone else, however, did receive what we deserved, and we’ll get to that a little later.
But for now, let’s bless the Lord with all that is within us because He hasn’t dealt with us according to our sins, nor has He punished us according to our iniquities. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that truth!
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