Chorus:
They’re underneath the blood on the cross of Calvary,
As far removed as darkness is from dawn;
In the sea of God’s forgetfulness, that’s good enough for me,
Praise God, my sins are gone! – Lyrics by N. Vandall
I have been singing this old time hymn all morning and remembering how far I have come. I was a sinner. Not just the ‘told a little white lie’ type of sinner, but a real sinner. Except for the one about Thou Shalt not Murder, I think I committed every other sins prohibited in the Ten Commandments. Did that make me feel good about myself? Was I happy? No, an emphatic no! At a certain point, I looked into the future and saw a sad ending to my life. That was my future without God, but, as the song says, Praise God, my sins are gone. God’s blood blotted them out and I must strain to remember how awful I was and how awful I felt.
I’m afraid that we as Christians have forgotten how it feels to be a sinner if we ever knew. If we could remember, it would change our attitude towards those who are currently caught up in the maelstrom of sin. By our actions, it appears that most Christians think that non-Christians are having all of the fun, that they are living lives that we envy with none of the consequences. In truth, everyone caught in a life of degradation feels hopeless, utterly, miserably, hopeless.
I serve as a CASA volunteer and as such, I am exposed to people caught up in an unsavory lifestyle that they can’t get away from. Some of them started out with lives of promise, but the exciting party life turned into desperate addiction. Their hunger for possessions turned into hoarding. Their promiscuity produced unwanted, abandoned children.
Those of us freed by Christ have the answer, we could be point the way for a world caught in the throes of sin if we were not so busy pointing a finger. We don’t have to tell them they are sinning. They know that. We should be telling them that there is an answer to their emptiness that is better than any solution the world can offer, that there is a place where their sins are as far removed as darkness is from dawn. Sometimes, we need some old-fashioned singing to remind us of just how forgiven we are.