In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD,
The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none;
And the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found:
For I will pardon them whom I reserve.
Forgiveness of all our sins will never seem more momentous and glorious than on the Last Day. Christ upon His throne will welcome the chosen multitude into God’s kingdom and consign countless others to eternal perdition, with no cause for the difference except for sheer grace given to one unworthy group instead of the other. Then we who are saved will experience an ocean of gratitude and offer wave upon wave of praise for so great salvation! As the seraphic Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in his best-known hymn, “I Am Debtor,”
When I hear the wicked call
On the rocks and hills to fall,
When I see them start and shrink
On the fiery deluge brink,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.
Jeremiah 50.20 is bright enough by itself, but when this diamond is appreciated in its setting of the dark and disturbing punishment of Israel’s archenemy Babylon (Jer 50–51), it shines with a heavenly luster.
“In those days, and in that time” refers to the days of divine retribution, when Babylon would be made desolate (v. 3), when the wrath of the Lord would make it wholly desolate without inhabitant, an astonishment to passers-by (v. 13), and when she would be repaid for all the evil she rationalized and perpetrated, even taking pleasure in it (vv. 7, 11).
God who decreed and directed all these atrocities in His Providence was, of course, completely just in His actions. “The iniquity of Israel . . . and the sins of Judah” were gross and grievous. As God’s chosen people, delivered from Egyptian bondage, entrusted with His written Word, and given a land flowing with milk and honey, they were under especially great obligations to worship Him faithfully. But they sinned worse than their pagan neighbors. Israel gave up worshipping the LORD for dunghill deities. They forsook their fountain of living waters and dug reservoirs that could hold no water (Jer 2.9–13). This figure “is uncommonly striking, by way of showing the folly of taking up with any creature comfort, to the forgetfulness of the infinite and eternally satisfying fullness of the Creator.”1 When God chastened them with catastrophes, He was only fulfilling His covenantal warnings which they had heard from the beginning (Deut 28.15), including the extreme measures He promised for their repentance and recovery (Deut 28.63–67).
But when the Lord’s wrath upon Babylon would come, the wonder of His pardon for Israel would be seen. Then it would be as if their sins and guilt were diligently sought and nowhere to be found. God would greatly pour out His gracious favor upon them, unlike with His severe dealings with the Babylonians. The Lord would cause the Jewish remnant to return and He would bless them in their own land once again as if they had never done anything wrong—indeed, as if they were righteous in His holy sight. Despite the holocaust they had endured, they never ceased to exist as His own holy people because He “reserved” (“preserved,” NKJV) them.
The divine promise of Jeremiah 50.20 was historically and partially fulfilled in the 5th century BC toward Old Covenant Israel, but this foreshadowed greater things beginning with Messiah’s advent, when our Lord Jesus Christ came to save His Church forever from all our sins and miseries.
Like old Israel, the Church Militant (the body of Christians still on earth) has much remaining sin. Chastening is the inevitable ministry to us of our loving heavenly Father (Heb 12.5–6). In Christ we are completely forgiven and counted perfectly righteous, but the Lord still sees our sins and deals with us, sometimes painfully, for our good. But these days of purification only continue for us until Christ’s coming again. On that Day of Judgment, the Lord will throw down forever the Babylon which is this present evil world, and He will also manifest the greatness of His gracious love toward His elect. Then our full and final forgiveness will be on glorious public display! No more guilt, no more shame, no more chastening! Christ is the Savior who “is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24).
Though they have sinned in Adam, and were so wretchedly guilty and filthy in their nature-state, so prone to backslidings, and guilty of so many after conversion, and though a body of sin and death is carried by them to the grave; yet they will at last be presented by Christ in perfect holiness, in complete righteousness, and in the shining robes of immortality and glory.2
This hope of future grace is a powerfully sanctifying truth in us now. A much less familiar verse of McCheyne’s aforementioned hymn says,
Even on earth, as through a glass
Darkly, let thy glory pass,
Make forgiveness feel so sweet,
Make thy Spirit’s help so meet,
Even on earth, Lord, make me know
Something of how much I owe.3
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1 Hawker, R. (2013). Poor Man’s Old Testament Commentary: Proverbs–Lamentations (Vol. 5). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
2 Gill, J. (1809). An Exposition of the New Testament (Vol. I–III). London: Mathews and Leigh, in loc.
3 McCheyne, R. M., & Bonar, A. A. (1894). Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne. Edinburgh; London: Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier.