I Knew Better When I Did It

She keeps coming back to the twelve seconds.

Not to the thing. The thing she has been over so many times that it has gone smooth, the way a stone in a pocket goes smooth, and there is nothing new in it and she has stopped expecting there to be.

The twelve seconds are before.

She was standing in a doorway with her hand on a frame and she knew. Completely. Not a vague sense, not a fog, not one of those situations people describe afterwards where they say they were not thinking clearly. She was thinking with total clarity. She could have written you a paragraph, in that doorway, on exactly what she was about to do and exactly what it was.

And then she went in anyway.

Twelve seconds, roughly, from the doorway to the decision. She has timed it in her head more than once, which she knows is a strange thing to do.

She is forty-nine. It was eleven years ago. She had been walking with God for nineteen years at that point, taught a class, knew her Bible properly, and every one of those facts is an aggravating factor in the court she has been running ever since.

Because here is the argument, and it is a good one, and nobody has ever heard it because she has never made it out loud.

The mercy is for people who did not know. That is what mercy is for. It is for the ignorant, the young, the ones who were badly taught or not taught at all or who were in a fog. She has extended it, warmly and sincerely, to about forty people over the years and she meant every word every time.

But she had nineteen years and a class and a Bible and twelve seconds in a doorway with her hand on the frame.

And a person with all four of those things is not the person the mercy was written for. That is the finding. It has stood for eleven years and it has never once been appealed, because she is the only judge in that room and she has never let anybody else in.

The clause you are looking for is not there

I want to take your argument seriously, because it is a real argument and you have never had it answered, and I am not going to wave at it warmly and move on. That would be the fortieth time somebody has been kind at you and it has not worked yet.

Here is your argument, stated properly: mercy is a provision for those who acted in ignorance, and knowledge is an aggravating factor which removes a person from the class of persons for whom the provision was made.

It is coherent. It is how human courts work, and they are right to. And it is not what the covenant says.

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.Hebrews 8:12

That sentence is quoted in Hebrews from Jeremiah, and it is the last clause of the new covenant as the writer sets it out. It is the terms. And I want you to read it looking specifically for the exemption you have been assuming is in there.

Their unrighteousness. Not their ignorance. Not their unrighteousness where it arose from poor teaching or youth or a fog.

And then the second half, which is the one that should interest a woman who has been running a court: their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. Two words for it, not one, and the second is the heavier: iniquity in that vocabulary carries the sense of a thing twisted deliberately, crookedness with intent.

It is in there on purpose. Whoever framed that clause had the deliberate ones in view and named them separately so that nobody could argue the covenant covered only the accidental.

You are inside those terms, and the terms name your category specifically, and that is not a kindness I am extending to you, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on the finding rather than on a verse you could have quoted to me.

Now let me say something about the forty people.

You have extended mercy warmly and sincerely to about forty people over the years, and you meant it every time. You have been administering a covenant you have been reading yourself out of. The terms are written down and they name the deliberate ones by their own word, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has made you good at handing them to other people.

And notice what you did with each of those forty. You did not investigate how much they knew. You did not establish, before extending it, whether they had been well taught or badly taught or whether there was a doorway with a hand on a frame. It never occurred to you to ask, because the covenant does not ask, and you knew that instinctively for all forty of them.

Scripture puts the remembering no more in God's hands as an act of will, and the Spirit of God has been the one making you good at that ministry for eleven years, and He does not usually appoint an excluded person to hand out the thing they have been excluded from.

I want to say something about the twelve seconds themselves, and then I will stop.

You were clear. You could have written a paragraph. You went in anyway.

That is what the second word in that verse is for. You are not an exception to a covenant that specifically enumerated your case, and the word says He remembers them no more, and the Spirit is the seal on it, and a doorway eleven years ago was fully in view when the terms were drawn up.

And if what is on you is heavier than this, if it has got as far as not wanting to be here at all, please tell one human being today. A doctor, a crisis line in your own country, one person who can sit with you. That is not a detour from any of this. It is part of it, and you are worth the phone call.

You are inside those terms, and the terms name your category by its own name. The word says He remembers their sins and their iniquities no more, and iniquity is the deliberate word, and the Holy Spirit has had you administering that covenant for eleven years.