Cast into the Depths of the Sea

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 7:19

Corrie ten Boom is remembered as a teacher of forgiveness, and the next three chapters are given to that theme. But her teaching on forgiving others always began somewhere else: with the discovery of her own need to be forgiven. She did not approach the people who had wronged her as an innocent party. She approached them as a sinner who had been caught hating, had confessed it, and had been washed. That order matters, and it is the subject of this chapter.

Hatred is murder

In The Greatest of These Is Love and The Love of Christ, two of her recorded addresses now on Ochorus, Corrie tells how she learned in the camp the name of the man she believed had betrayed her family. A prisoner from Haarlem told her. Corrie had given him money herself, she says, on the morning of the raid, believing his story that it would free his wife. Hatred rose in her. She was honest enough to call it by its name.

Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 1 JOHN 3:15

She knew from Scripture, she says, that hatred is murder in God’s sight. But she also knew what Scripture tells a murderer to do. She confessed it, repented of it, and asked for cleansing.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 JOHN 1:9

This is where her teaching on forgiveness always started. Before she could forgive the betrayer, she had to be forgiven for hating him. The bitterness in her own heart was a sin of her own, not merely a wound someone else had caused. That is an uncomfortable truth for anyone who has been badly wronged, and she did not soften it. The injury was his. The hatred was hers.

No fishing

When she described what God does with confessed sin, Corrie loved the verse from Micah at the head of this chapter. God casts our sins into the depths of the sea. She liked to add, with a smile, that the Bible does not say so, but she believed God then puts up a notice forbidding fishing. It is one of the best-remembered touches of her preaching, and it makes a serious point with a light hand. What God has forgiven, we are not to drag back up — not our own sins, and, as she would later insist, not other people’s either.

As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. PSALM 103:12

Papers in the stove

She had a picture of this from her own imprisonment, told in the same addresses. At Scheveningen she was questioned by a German officer in whose hands her life lay. She says he showed her papers found in the house — names, addresses and details that could have cost many lives. She could not explain them. Then he opened the stove and burned them in front of her. As she watched the flames, she says, she understood as never before what Paul meant about the record of our debts being taken away and nailed to the cross.

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. COLOSSIANS 2:14

The officer, by her account, had been moved by what she told him of Christ, and Betsie had prayed with him during her own questioning. The story rests on Corrie’s telling; her earliest account already speaks of a kindly interrogating officer. Its lesson is clear. There is a record against every one of us, and it is fatal. At the cross God burned it.

A letter in June 1945

Having been forgiven, she forgave. On 19 June 1945, barely six months after Betsie’s death and only weeks after the liberation of the Netherlands, Corrie wrote to the man she had been told was the informer. The letter was published thirty years later among her prison letters. The Ochorus biography summarises it: she told him plainly that her father and sister had died because of what he had done, and that she herself had suffered; she told him she forgave him everything; she told him she was praying for him and sending him a New Testament, because Christ had borne his sins too.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. MATTHEW 5:44

The date matters more than the details. She did not wait until her feelings had healed, or until justice had been done, or until he had asked. She wrote while the grief was raw. It is the earliest evidence we have that she believed what she would later teach everywhere: that forgiveness is first a decision, and the feelings follow.

What we do not know

Honesty requires a caution here. In her addresses, Corrie says that the man was sentenced to death, that he wrote back telling her that her forgiveness had brought him to Christ, and that he was executed soon after, reconciled to God. As the Ochorus biography sets out, the records do not confirm this. The later books name him, a local historian gives a different form of the name, and no one of that name appears among those executed under Dutch postwar justice; many death sentences were commuted. We do not know what became of him, whether the letter reached him, or how he answered. The story of his conversion may be true, or may have drifted in from another. What we have with certainty is her letter, and its date.

This should not trouble the reader. The value of her forgiveness never depended on its result. She forgave because she had been forgiven, not because it worked.

Forgiveness is not the end of justice

One more point needs making, because her teaching is sometimes misread. Forgiving the betrayer did not mean pretending he had done nothing. Her letter named the harm. Nor did it mean asking the courts to release him. Scripture distinguishes the believer’s surrender of personal vengeance from the magistrate’s duty to punish wrong.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. ROMANS 12:19

What Corrie gave up was her own claim to repayment. She handed the debt to God, and wished the man well, which for her meant wishing that he would come to know Christ.

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. EPHESIANS 4:32

Even as. The measure of our forgiving is the forgiveness we have received. Those who have not grasped how much they have been forgiven will find it very hard to forgive much.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there someone you hate, or have hated? Call it by its biblical name, confess it to God, and ask for cleansing today.

2. Read Micah 7:18–19 aloud. Is there a forgiven sin of your own you keep fishing for? Leave it in the sea.

3. Consider whether there is someone to whom you should write, as Corrie wrote in 1945. Draft the letter, even if you do not yet send it.

4. Distinguish, in one situation you face, between giving up personal revenge and abandoning justice. Which have you confused?

5. Spend time this week thanking God specifically for the record of your debts that He has nailed to the cross.

A PRAYER

Father, I have hated, and You call it murder. I confess it now, and I ask You to cleanse me by the blood of Christ.

Thank You for casting my sins into the depths of the sea. Keep me from fishing for them, and from fishing for the sins of others.

I give up my claim to repay those who have wronged me. I hand the debt to You, who judge justly.

Teach me to forgive as I have been forgiven, and to pray for my enemies until I can wish them well. Amen.