A Clean Page and a Fresh Start
"I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions" -- Isaiah 43:25
The idea here is that of a record written—a record of transgressions, a record of wrong doing. Can such a record be blotted out? We recall the famous lines of Omar:
The moving finger writes, and having writ
Moves on; nor all your piety and wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
Some of our moralists agree with Omar. They tell us that a repeated act may fix a habit, a repeated thought may color the mind, and the habit and the color of the mind shape the character, and the character the destiny; and they add that there it stands fixed, ineradicable. A man writes his own story, and a sorry story it is. What he has written he cannot unwrite.
There is a certain justice about this thinking, but it is in effect a doctrine of despair. Is there nothing else to be said? Yes. God has something else to say! "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." What may be impossible to man is possible with God.
The apostle Paul speaks of "the writing that is against us," and tells us that Christ blots it out, takes it out of the way, nails it to His cross. Blotting out! The ancients used parchment and frequently with pumice scoured out or rubbed off what was written, and there was a clear page for something new. That is the blotting out Paul has in mind—a clean sheet with not a vestige of the old writing. What a contrast to all those ideas of fate, destiny, the irrevocable past. A triumphant Christ who can make a clean page of your past on which He will write the new name, the new story, beginning with redemption and going on to a glorious new life.
I listened some while ago to a radio dramatization of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. It is a masterpiece, but there is one thing about it I do not like. Thackeray can show human nature in all of its ugliness, and when he gets through he walks off and leaves you looking at it. How differently Christ deals with humanity! He can follow a prodigal into every downward movement, down to the swine-trough, and then take him by the hand and lead him back to the Father’s house, put a robe on him, a ring on his hand, shoes on his feet, and start the angels of heaven rejoicing because that which was lost is found. It is a great gospel, a wonderful gospel, that Jesus gives the prodigal another chance, that Christ can cleanse away the sins of the past, give a man a clean page and a fresh start.
