Forgetting vs. remembering - God forgives us when we repent of our sins. He wipes the slate clean. When He forgives us, He forgets our sins - many scriptures assure us of this. In Jeremiah 31:34, we read, “for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” And in Hebrews 8:12, “ . . . and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” Again in Hebrews 10:17, “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” One more, in Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

Until now, I have never even considered disagreeing in the least with my blog friend. And, I respect him as a Bible scholar so that I would always defer to his interpretation, if we ever did not agree. Until now . . . and, even now, I am not going to disagree, but . . .

Without warning, I am going to kind of go in a different direction on this “forgetting” topic - can’t seem to get it out of my mind. Maybe that is the purpose of the blog - to force us to think through some ideas.

Anyway, here are my thoughts the past few days on the subject.

The scripture is so clear about God forgiving us, therefore, we are required to forgive others. In Jesus’ teaching on prayer, in the Lord’s Prayer, it is clearly pointed out that we cannot expect God’s forgiveness unless we forgive others, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” (Matt. 6:12)

Another scripture, in Mark 11:25, 26 “. . . forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

So, it is clear that we will receive God’s forgiveness, only when we forgive others.

Then, the topic of forgetting. God forgives and God forgets. I have already given some scriptures which support God’s forgetting of our sins, when we come to Him in repentance.

However, it is in OUR forgetting that I am struggling. I can see that it would be obvious that if God has forgotten our sins, there would be no need for us to keep remembering them.

But, I think our memory has been given to us - for a similar reason as rules (you remember my rendition of “The Blessing of Rules”). I truly believe that God has given us our memory, and if, in remembering our sins of the past in that we are saved from repeating them, then remembering is not that bad. I agree that we do not have to live in the shadow of the sins of the past and spend time beating ourselves up in our remembering, but . . . . we need to remember if it keeps us safe from repeating.

There is a saying, something like “If you don’t deal with history, you will repeat it”. You get the idea.

Then, a second topic of remembering other people’s sins - when their sins have hurt or affected us. I agree that if there has been repentance, then there is forgiveness of God. Then we too must forgive, as in the Lord’s Prayer, in order to have God’s forgiveness for our own sins.

However, in the forgetting - I think it works in the same way with remembering our own sins - if remembering keeps us safe from repeating, then maybe there is merit in remembering. We have heard something like one would never put one’s hand near the hot stove, if we have ever experienced a small burn. We remember the pain of the small burn to protect us from danger in the future.

I do not, however, believe we have any right in bringing up the other’s sins - when it suits us – because they too have experienced God’s forgiveness. If we truly forgive the person, we treat them if it did not happen - it takes faith on our part, and we can, by faith, forget the pain of the incident. We do not forget the incident, but by faith, we do not remember the pain of the transgression toward us.

Note that these are just my thoughts, certainly not any insinuation that my understanding of the scriptures is higher than my blogger friend, or of those of the comments (which we love) made on the blogs.

A good scripture to end with, Matt. 6: 14, 15, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Submitted by Naida