“But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”
The line that precedes these words in Psalm 130 reads, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” The question is rhetorical, and the intended response is “Nobody.” If God gave everyone exactly what he or she deserved, this planet would be a hollowed-out, smoking husk.
But he doesn’t, and there’s the rub. God “devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast”. “He is not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”