Can God Forget?
by Pastor Ricky Kurth
“And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17).
We know that God forgives the
sins of His people, but does He forget them? It would seem so.
Our text suggests that He “will not remember” the sins committed against
Him by His children.
Isaih 43:25). Believers have always found a great deal of comfort in this blessed thought.
But then God calls upon us to likewise
forgive others “even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you”
(Epesians 4:32). Doesn’t this suggest that we too should forgive and
forget? Perhaps you are thinking, “But Pastor, you don’t know what
they did to me!” True, but was it more than what was done to God when men
crucified His Son?
Remember, God’s vow to forgive and
forget the sins of His people includes even the brutal murder of His only
begotten Son. We are tempted to think, “Well, it’s easy for God to forget,” but
such is not the case. God says of the sins of unbelievers that
He “will NEVER forget ANY of their works” (Amos 8:7). How then can this
God of “total recall” forget our sins? Does His memory have a
convenient “on/off ” switch that makes it easy for Him to forgive and forget?
If so, then we who do not have such a switch would have an
excuse for forgiving but not forgetting. But if God has such a switch, would He
not also have to erase His memory of Calvary, or else forever wonder why His
Son had to die? But it cannot be that God could forget the Cross, for
Revelation 5:6 joins John 20:27 to reveal that the Lord’s
resurrection body will forever bear the scars of the Cross, making it
impossible for God—or us—to ever forget His sacrifice for our sins.
What then is the answer to our question? Can God forget our sins? Perhaps
the reader has noticed that we never read that God will forget the
sins of His people, but rather that He “will not remember” them. By a
deliberate act of His “will” He chooses to act toward us AS IF He has
forgotten our sins, on the basis of the blood of the Cross. That’s how
fully and completely He has forgiven our sins. And if we are to forgive others
“as” God forgave us, then we too must choose to act toward others as if
we have so fully forgiven their transgressions against us that we have
forgotten them—also on the basis of Christ’s shed blood. This and
this alone is complete forgiveness of others, and it is high spiritual ground
indeed.
May God help us to live with a slate wiped clean of “all bitterness,
and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking… with all malice”
(Ephesians 4:31).
257: Where Sin Abounds - Lesson 2 Part 1 Book 22
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