It is one of the most precious of promises in all of God’s Word. In Psalm 103:12 and Hebrews 8:12 we are told that He remembers our sins no more. The promise is so precious, in fact, that we should not be surprised that the devil constantly seeks to undermine it.
As is his unholy habit, often the devil’s claims include a dose of truth. For instance, he will remind us as we read these promises that God is omniscient. He knows all things. Which means this His forgetting of our sins is not exactly the same thing as me forgetting where I put my car keys. If you were to give God a truth serum and ask, “Do you remember when I took your name in vain?” He would not say, “Huh?”
The devil brings a second reminder. Despite God’s forgiveness there may remain temporal consequences for sins He’s forgiven. Jeffrey Dahmer, happily, confessed Christ while in prison. Assuming a genuine profession, the sound perspective affirms that he was welcomed into God’s presence of God as His son. And it affirms this has zero bearing on the state’s God-given obligation to execute him for his murders.
The trouble is, what we do with these truths is we decide we will forget about the forgetting and as such add our own consequences. To put it more clearly, we fail to forgive as our Father does. He no longer burns with fury against us. He doesn’t look at us as anything other than His beloved children. When He looks at us He doesn’t see our rebellion, but His Son’s perfect submission.
His forgetting means that He does not hold our sins against us. The function of earthly consequences is to cleanse us, wash us. We learn, when He forgives and others do not, to repent of our own failures to forgive those He has forgiven. We learn the infinite value of His sacrifice. We remember His graze is amazing, in saving a wretch like me.
When we seek to stab our brothers with sins from their past we seek to stab our Elder Brother again. When we sneer at the repentance of others we cast a shadow on our own. We scoff at His perfect sacrifice.
It is not an accident that Satan is called the Accuser. Nor should we miss the fact that when we accuse the brethren for sins our Lord has paid for we are doing the devil’s work. It is a dangerous business, a running toward the dual blades of the buzzsaw of “Judge not, lest you be judged” (Matt. 7:1) and “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matt. 6:12).
The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for sinners. May we never cover the aroma of life with the stench of death.