Accuracy in Belief

Though I have been a Christian for twelve years, I was raised in church all of my life. Even before I confessed Jesus as Lord of my life I knew the answers to many of the basic questions of Christianity. I even had firm beliefs about some controversial issues, mostly based on what I was taught by my elders and with little reliance on personal study of the Bible.

Since I was saved in 1998, I have endeavored to understand what I believe – or what I ought to believe – by studying the Scriptures first, then reaching a point of belief. It is interesting the things that I have taken for granted for much of my life that are not completely accurate.

For example…

I was taught – and have actually taught others – that God not only forgives our sins; He also forgets them. This was based on an interpretation of particular scripture references (such as Psalm 103:12, Isaiah 43:25, Jeremiah 31:34, Jeremiah 50:20, Micah 7:19, Hebrews 8:12, and Hebrews 10:17). However, these references do not say that God will forget our sins, but that He will "remember them no more." (Let your mouse hover over each reference to read them.)

The word that is translated as "remember" in verses like Hebrews 8:12 and 10:17 is used over twenty times in the New Testament (KJV). In almost every case, it is translated as remember, but in other places it is translated as "being mindful" (2 Tim. 1:4, 2 Peter 3.2) and "make mention" (Heb. 11.22). Strong's Concordance defines the word as "to be recalled or to return to one's mind."

The point is that God does not forget our sins. He makes a willful decision to never call them to mind again. Under the Old Testament economy, the sins of the people were recalled on an annual basis so that the priest could make atonement for them (Heb. 10:3, Ex. 30:10). Under grace, once our sins have been forgiven – cleansed by the blood of the Lamb – God will never again call them to memory.

One way to understand this is to look at places where God said He would remember, such as Gen. 9:14-15, Lev. 26:42, and Ezekiel 16.60. God said, "I will remember my covenant with you." Certainly God had not forgotten the covenant and then searched His memory to see if possibly He could recall it. His intent was to say that He would always keep the covenant that He made with His people in the forefront of His mind. So to "remember not" would not mean to forget, but to intentionally allow our sins to pass out of His elective memory as they are forgiven.

There are a couple of other points that are important here. First, God is omniscient, meaning that He knows all things past, present, and future. There is no knowledge that He does not have – even of our past sins. Secondly, we are not able to forget our sins, so that if God did forget them, then we would have knowledge that God does not have and that is impossible.

This is not a "deal breaker." In other words, if we say that God forgets our sins or that He remembers them no more, the effect is the same. Our sins, once forgiven, will never again enter the conscious memory of God. That is grace.

It is simply a reminder that we need to be careful when interpreting the Bible and not take for granted things we were taught for truth without a thorough search of what "thus saith the Lord."