A Unique God - Micah 7:18-20

¹⁸Who is a God like Thee, who pardons iniquity

And passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?

He does not retain His anger forever,

Because He delights in unchanging love.

¹⁹He will again have compassion on us;

He will tread our iniquities under foot.

Yes, Thou wilt cast all their sins

Into the depths of the sea.

²⁰Thou wilt give truth to Jacob

And unchanging love to Abraham,

Which Thou didst swear to our forefathers

From the days of old.

I have argued previously that Micah is waiting on God for salvation from sin. I need to acknowledge that many (most?) commentators see Micah's statements in this chapter as being representative of a national confession (representing the remnant), not a personal confession. While there may be an element of that (see v.20 above), Micah continual uses the first person in his confession. There is more that could be said here, but I want to focus on v.18-19 above.

Micah acknowledges here at the end of his book that God is unique among all supposed gods. The uniqueness that Micah focuses on here is God's mercy/grace/love. Yahweh is not like the idols of the people. He pardons and passes over. He does not retain anger but delights in unchanging love.

Notice that sin is an offense to God. Anger at sin is present, but not retained. Instead Yahweh delights in a love that is unaffected by our actions. We may bear indignation for sin, but final deliverance will come to His people.

Why? Because He will cover our sin. I don't know that Micah understood fully how this would happen. Certainly his contemporary Isaiah has more revealed to him about this (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). But Micah knew enough to understand that God would "tread our iniquities under foot." This act causes our sin to be removed from His presence as if covered by the sea.

Conclusion:

Like Micah we should wait expectantly for God's deliverance from not only the penalty, but even the presence of sin. Like Micah, we must willingly bear temporal chastisement for sin. But like Micah, , and even more so because we have seen Jesus on the cross, we should see that our sin has been buried in the sea of Christ's righteousness. Yahweh loves us with an unchanging love that has provided the Lamb so that our sins might be passed over. Truly, truly, there is no other god like Him!