God who forgets
Psa
25:7
Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways;
Memory
is a strange thing. We want to remember things and can't, and the
things we'd rather forget we can't. We'd like to be able to remember
all the good things we've done and all the good times we've had –
but so often we forget. But then there are the bad things we've done,
the embarrassing things we've said, and we wish they could be utterly
blotted from our memories, but they remain there in stark clarity.
David has been asking the Lord to teach and guide him, and he's fearful
of anything that might hinder the Lord doing that. He looks back and,
like we've just said, he's got memories of the past that he'd rather
forget and he worries that those things from his youth might disqualify
him from knowing the Lord and receiving His blessing. It is a common
worry. So he cries to the Lord, Lord, please forget my foolish past,
see my heart today.
Isaiah
made a similar call: “Do not be angry beyond
measure, O LORD; do not remember our sins forever” (Isa
64:9). Most of the time the cry to the Lord was to remember the past,
His relationship with Israel, or the Lord Himself saying He would
remember their sin to judge it. So, here we have just two calls for
the Lord to forget, calls that find echoes in most of our hearts.
And
the good news? Isaiah has it again: “I,
even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake,
and remembers your sins no more.” (Isa 43:25).
How was the Lord able to say that justly? Isaiah heard it: “Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has
been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received
from the LORD
's hand double for all her sins.”
(Isa 40:2). The Lord had dealt with
Jerusalem in Isaiah's day and therefore once dealt with, He did not
keep on harping back to it.
Also
Isa 44:22 “I have swept away your offenses
like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist.” The Lord
laid down the principle through Ezekiel: “And if I say to the
wicked man, "You will surely die,' but
he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right…..
None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him.
He has done what is just and right; he will surely live.”
(Ezek 33:14-16) In other words where there is true repentance the
Lord will wipe away from His memory the past sins. David came to really
know this: “as far as the east is from
the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
(Psa 103:12). There is no measurable distance between ‘East'
and ‘West' so he says they have been completely taken away and forgotten!
The prophet Micah knew the same thing: “Who
is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?” (Mic 7:18).
Here
was a principle being wrought in the Old Testament that burst through
into full glory in the New Testament: “for
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
(Rom 3:23,24).
And do you remember what they say justification means? It's “just-as-if-I'd
never sinned”. That's what the work of Jesus does. He so completely
deals with our sins on the Cross that it's like there was never any
sin. We've been forgiven, washed and cleansed (1 Jn 1:9), and once
God cleanses or purifies, He doesn't keep going back to look at the
dirt that was washed off. That's why Paul could say, “Therefore,
there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
(Rom 8:1). The past has been dealt with. God has forgotten it.
Move on! What's next?