“I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you.”
-Isaiah 44:22
Think about what this verse represents in your life. When we turn from our sins to God, when we trust in him for the forgiveness of our sins, specifically trust in Christ as the one who paid the price for our sins, then by faith in Christ in returning to God and repenting from sin, turning from our sin and trusting in him, God says, “I’ve blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist.” You think about it. Can you see mist? No. It’s there, and it evaporates. It’s gone. This is the picture of our sins before our holy God. Just think about it, all of your sins. All of your disobedience to God.
Isaiah 44:22 Calls Us to Turn to God
When we turn to God in repentance, God forgives our sins.
I don’t like to think about all the sins in my life, but I think about them just in the last week, the ways I’ve sinned in ways I wouldn’t want anybody else to know, but God knows and by his grace he totally blots out, that when he sees me, when he sees you. By faith in Christ, when he sees us he doesn’t see our sin. He sees the very righteousness of Jesus. This is what redemption means, that when we stand before our holy God, the price for our sins have been paid, and they are wiped away. They’re gone like mist. Gone. God, we praise you. We praise you for this reality today. We praise you for forgiving us of our sin, for freeing us from the ultimate penalty of sin, eternal death. Jesus, thank you for paying the price for our sins, so that right now we can pray right where we are.
Isaiah 44:22 Thanks God for His Forgiveness
Whether we’re riding in a car, sitting at work, at home by ourselves, with family. Wherever we are we can look up to you in prayer and know that by faith in Christ you have blotted out our transgressions like a cloud and our sins like mist, that you’ve removed them from us, that you don’t hold us accountable for them. God, thank you. Help us to hate sin today. Help us to turn from sin. God, if we do wander into sin, help us to run back to you immediately. Help us to return to you immediately as our redeemer in the confidence we have that when we confess our sins in a 1 John 1 kind of way you are faithful and just. You forgive us of our sins. You cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God, thank you for cleansing us, cleansing me, cleansing us from all unrighteousness. We don’t deserve this grace. We praise you for blotting out our transgressions like a cloud and our sins like mist. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
