When I kept silent, my bones wasted away. Psalm 32:3
Joseph was seventeen when his brothers sold him as a slave (Gen. 37:2). He was thirty years old when he entered service to Pharaoh, and then there were seven years of plentiful harvests before the famine in Egypt (Gen. 42). This means that more than twenty years had passed since the brothers sold Joseph to the traders on their way to Egypt.
During these twenty years, the brothers had slipped into the worst of all positions: their sins were forgotten but not forgiven. No doubt, what they had done would have been on their minds at times. But they never came to their father and said, “Dad, we lied to you. Your son, Joseph, was not killed by wild animals. We sold him to traders on their way to Egypt.” There was no confession, and there had been no repentance. The brothers simply moved on.
Now, twenty years later, the brothers were working for their father; however, for twenty years they had also been lying to their father, deceiving their father. Having repeated the sad story of how their poor brother was so ‘tragically killed’ by wild beasts to every person who visited the family, they might well have come to believe the story themselves.
If your sins are forgotten but not forgiven, you are in the worst of spiritual positions. If you are troubled by the memory of your past sins, it is far better that your sins are forgiven but not forgotten than forgotten but not forgiven.
The worst position of all is to be at peace with yourself when your sins are not dealt with. Hope begins for these brothers, and hope begins for you, when God awakens the conscience.
Is there a particular sin that you’ve been trying to hide or forget about? As you seek to bring it out into the light, remember that a sin is better forgiven than forgotten.
