Every hard thing that happens feels like the bill coming due for my past. Is God settling accounts with me?

“Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”

Micah prophesied to a nation that had earned judgment and knew it. He ends his book astonished, not that God is fair, but that God pardons and throws sins into the depths of the sea. The image is chosen deliberately: the sea does not give things back. He is describing a God whose particular speciality is not careful record keeping.

“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;”

Paul writes to a young church anxious about rules and hidden debts, and he reaches for the language of a legal document. The charge sheet against them was not reduced, and it was not paid off in instalments. It was blotted out entirely and nailed to the cross. If that is true, then whatever is happening to you now, it is not an invoice arriving.