Audio Transcript
We all have things we wish we hadn’t done, memories that just pop into our head at 2:00am and make you cringe for how you hurt someone. And sometimes, it’s more than just cringing. It’s a wash of shame: this deep, heavy feeling that your past is a ghost, following you around, a haunting memory you cannot forget. But what if the ghost of your past doesn’t actually have the power to wreck your future? Today on Ask Pastor John: Your regrets cannot ruin you.
The question is from a young woman. “Pastor John, I love this podcast, and I love that you love the apostle Paul so much. My question is about him as I try to get into his mind. Romans 8:35–39 is glorious to me in listing off many things that cannot separate us from the love of Christ. He focuses on present suffering, yet Paul never makes mention of the past, like past sin and wrongs against others. Many people struggle deeply with shame and rumination over memories of their past evils. That’s me as well. And I know Paul’s past was dark, too. Is Paul assuming the past has already been dealt with through the cross? Or why do you think he does not mention past things here in this list of things that cannot separate us from Christ?”
I have never asked myself this question. I like questions like this that make me go, “Whoa, what do I think about this?” And so it has been very helpful for me to give a little bit of thought to this. Why does Paul not refer to past sins when he’s listing the things that cannot separate us from the love of God? Here’s the passage, the great climactic statement at the end of Romans 8:
I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38–39)
No Condemnation
Now, as I pondered this question, what struck me is not that Paul doesn’t mention past sins but that he doesn’t mention any sins. He does not say, “Sin will not separate us from the love of God in Christ.” Now, why is that? Why doesn’t he say, “Sins will not separate us from the love of God in Christ”?
And I think Paul would answer like this: “I just spent seven chapters showing how God in his mercy has obliterated the guilt of all your sins — past, present, and future — all of them. This climactic chapter of Romans, the Great Eight, begins with the thunderclap summary of seven chapters. ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ [Romans 8:1] — no condemnation for past sins, no condemnation for present sins, no condemnation for future sins. Your past sins cannot separate you from God in Christ.”
And then I think Paul would add, tenderly, knowing where this person is probably coming from, “I’d know about past sins. Oh, how I’d know about past sins. I ravaged the church [Acts 8:3; 22:4]. I entered house after house and dragged off men and women and committed them to prison and death. I ruined people’s lives, and I boasted in it. I persecuted the church violently. I tried to destroy the very work of God.” And then he would add, I think, “Listen to me, my dear friend, my burdened friend.”
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15–16)
That’s you. That’s you. God saved a killer of Christians so that we would know and feel what God has done with past sins and sinners like Paul. That’s why he ordained for Paul to be chosen in the womb and then saved after he became a murderer: so that we would take heart and not despair over our past.
All Forgiven
And would not Jesus step in at this point and add, “Remember the woman at the well?” She had five husbands and was living with a lover (John 4:18). What a wreckage she has left in her life, and he gave her living water, and she lived, and she was new. And then wouldn’t Jesus remind us of the woman who was wiping his feet with her tears and her hair? “I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven. . . . But he who is forgiven little,” he says to Simon the Pharisee, “loves little” (Luke 7:47). Her past sins were not producing paralyzing remorse. They were producing humility and love.
“It isn’t past sins that will condemn a person; it’s not believing that those past sins are forgiven.”
Let the word all sink in from Colossians 2:13–14: God has “forgiven us all our trespasses [all of them] by canceling the record of debt. . . . This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Same word. Let it sink in: all. In 1 John 1:7, “The blood of Jesus [God’s] Son cleanses us from all sin.” What a precious word. What an absolutely precious word. Let it sink to the bottom of your troubled heart: all of it, all of it forgiven, canceled, nailed to the cross, cleansed.
Why is God willing to do this? He tells us in Isaiah 43:25:
I, I am he
who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
and I will not remember your sins.
“I won’t, for my own sake.” In other words, why? Why does he act like this? Why does he save us like this? For the glory of his grace. That’s why: that we would spend eternity making much of the glory of the grace of God in the blotting out of our sin.
Trust and Live Free
If you’re a Christian, if you’re in Christ Jesus, nothing, absolutely nothing in your past can ruin your life. Let that sink in. There is a difference between your past and what you make of your past. It isn’t past sins that will condemn the Christian; it’s not believing that those past sins are forgiven. What a difference. That’s the issue — whether you believe it. It might feel like it’s the past sins that are ruining you. That’s not true. It is not true. It is not the past sins that are ruining you. It’s what you’re doing with those past sins right now that is ruining you or not. God has dealt with the sin. He’s dealt with it. And he’s urging us to believe him, to rest in him, to enjoy what he’s done for us.
Now, let’s be really honest. You might have sinned against someone so badly that you ruined much of his or her life. Maybe you ruined them financially. Maybe you ruined them physically. Maybe you were driving drunk, and you hit someone, and they’re now paralyzed for the rest of their life. And it is totally understandable — oh, yes, it is — that the memory of this can be crushing.
But I’ll say it again: God has dealt with that at the level of guilt, and the guilt is taken away. Therefore, the effect of the memory should not be a consciousness of damnation or guilt. It should be, it can be, regret. What a difference between guilt and regret. Regret and guilt are not the same. Regret is proper. We would be callous and hard-hearted if we did not feel regret for the hurt that we have caused people. But there is regret that leads to death, and there is regret that leads to life. And the regret that leads to life is built on the promises of God, the promises of grace working in us what is humanly impossible — namely, that we are able to press on with life, even fruitfully, not just surviving but living humbly and lovingly and productively.
Let me close with this. This may be hard to grasp, but I’ll bet many of you who have wrestled with these things know what I’m talking about. There will always be a sad part of our lives, when we realize what we have done to offend God and hurt others. It’s like a plaintive strain in the melody of our lives. It never goes away, the sorrowful tone in the music — but it’s not a joyless sorrow. That’s the scar that is left from the wound of sin. But that sadness, that scar, need not paralyze us but can actually sweeten and deepen our humility, our brokenness, our empathy, our compassion, our love for other people and for God. God doesn’t waste anything. He wants you to trust him and live.
