Ah, the joys of a clear conscience.

Entering a room of jostling colleagues, sure you’ve spoken kindly of each one. Finishing your tax return with certainty you’ve paid each charge the law required. Walking by mouth-watering chocolates for six days straight without even opening the box.

This doesn’t sound like your story? You either?

The inner voice that calls to mind our secret crossings of the line is rarely ever silent. While waiting for much-needed sleep, we churn on memories we’d love to lose. We’ve whittled down our rivals; we gave ourselves deductions for “unspecified” expenses; we bought replacement boxes of those chocolate cremes we can’t resist. The list our consciences won’t leave alone is long—and growing longer.

Which makes grace even lovelier when we discover its power and its healing.

When God forgives us through the sacrifice of Jesus, He chooses—in His grace—to forget the very things we otherwise could not forget. “As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).

The final word about our lives is not a litany of pride or gluttony or lust. The word is love—the kind that will not let us go.

In grace, we may forget the things God chooses to forget.

So stay in it. -Bill Knott