Each year, as New Year’s Day arrives, believers wrestle quietly with one of the Apostle Paul’s most puzzling assertions: “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal” (Phil 3:13-14).
How—exactly—is it possible to “forget what lies behind”?
The year just lived was full of slights and insults: they fester unforgettably each time that face or name appears.
The year just past brought wounds—both planned and unintentional. Can willing it remove the evidence of scars?
The year gone by saw failures—ours and others—whose effects cannot be trimmed by noting January 1. Will the famed power of positive thinking erase the pain of choices we or others made?
We only can forget what we’ve forgiven—done by us, or done by others. And we only can forgive when we’re forgiven—by a power outside ourselves who cannot lie. God “never changes or casts a shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19).
What God forgets, we safely can forget. When God forgives, we find His grace to add our own, releasing others and ourselves from all of last year’s failures.
Grace doesn’t simply turn the page. It sees, acknowledges, forgives—and gradually forgets. The year ahead will help us practice our forgetting.
So stay in grace. -Bill Knott
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Walking Together (June 19, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Righting Our Wrongs (June 12, 2020)
Dixil Rodriguez: Forecast: Heavy Rain (June 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: First Personal Plural (June 5, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Widening The Circle (May 29, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Received—And Given (May 22, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Grace Without Fear (May 15, 2020)
Jared Thurmon: Signs of the End (May 2020)
Transformation Tips: A Bible Primer For Crisis Management (May 2020)
Brinda Kiš: The Offer (May 2020)
Searching The Obvious: How Are We Doing? (May 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Grace Reaching (May 1, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: All Of Grace (April 24, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Trusting What's True (April 17, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Morning Has Broken (April 10, 2020)
Journeys With Jesus: The Face of Seth (April 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: When I'm Afraid (April 3, 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Alone, Not Lonely (March 27, 2020)
Expect Trouble to Break Out: A Conversation with Shawn Boonstra (March 2020)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: Glad To Pray (March 20, 2020)
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