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: PROOF OF LIFE (May 21, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: HELD BY GRACE (May 14, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: WHAT CAN WASH AWAY MY SIN? (May 07, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: FORGIVENESS ON A STRING (April 30, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: THE GROWING SEASON (April 23, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: THE CONFIDENCE OF GOD (April 16, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: NO TRAVELING ALONE (April 09, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: HAIL THE DAY (April 02, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: UNBROKEN LOVE (March 26, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: NOT FOR SALE (March 19, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: THE HOUSE THAT GRACE BUILDS (March 12. 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: A NEW ECONOMY (March 05, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: THE FLOWERING OF GRACE (February 26, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: GETTING WHAT WE DON’T DESERVE (February 19, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: MANNA IN OUR WILDERNESS (February12, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: ASSUMED IDENTITY (February 05, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: WHY GRACE MAKES US UNCOMFORTABLE (January 29, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: REASSURING RHYTHMS (January 22, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: RECLAIMING OUR IDENTITY (January 15, 2021)
Bill Knott's GraceNotes: LOVE THAT WON’T LET GO (January 08, 2021)
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