God doesn’t hold grudges! Wow, that’s good to know because there are plenty of things in my life that offend God. But I’m pretty good at doing at holding grudges. I know how to hold on to them and hold on to them and never let them go. When I was a child, my parents bought me a stamp book. Ever since then, I’ve been collecting stamps. I have albums full of stamps. They’re not worth a lot of money, but they are mine! I also have a coin collection. It’s not worth a lot of money, but it contains my father’s mercury dimes and flying eagle quarters, and I’ll never get rid of them. Unfortunately, I also collect grudges! They are all mine also. They have sentimental value also because they are so personal. But they are the least valuable of my collections because they don’t add anything of value to my life at all; instead, they take value from my life.
God never collects wrongs or holds grudges. Psalm 103, verse 9 says, “God will not constantly accuse us…” The verb that the English Standard Version translates as “accuse,” as the United Bible Societies Handbook for Bible Translators says, “the verb, used only here in Psalms, means to hold a grudge against someone.” God never does that! We often forget that the greatest commandment, according to Jesus, is not a “new commandment” but rather is something that has its roots in the Old Testament. The command to love God is found in Deuteronomy chapter 6, and the command to love our neighbor is found in Leviticus 19. In that chapter, verses 18 and 19 put together the idea of vengeance, grudge-holding, and love of neighbor. It says, “Never get revenge. Never hold a grudge… Instead, love your neighbor as you love yourself. I am the LORD.” Frequently, God ends exhortations with the phrase “I am the Lord.” I think it might mean something like “because that’s the way I am.” God never tells us to do something that He doesn’t do himself. Thus, Jesus lived his entire life without sin and without carrying a grudge, even against those who nailed him to the cross. He repeated, “Father, forgive them…” more than once from the cross.
A. W. Tozer puts it this way, “He forgives and forgets, burying your old load of guilt so that it no longer exists. God has promised, ‘I will not remember your guilt.’ Since God is able to remember everything, the only way to figure this out is that God beats that guilt and condemnation back out of being, so it does not even exist anymore! The sin that God pardons is no longer an entity—it is gone forever!” The same Psalm I quoted above (Psalm 103) goes on in verse 12 to say, “… as far as the east is from the west, so far does our Lord remove our sins from us.” Lord, help me become like you and throw out my grudge collections!