Does God Forget Our Sins?
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. (Heb 8:12)We are imputed Christ’s righteousness. Since we have His imputed righteousness, we can be treated as if we had no sin. We are credited Christ’s righteousness and He will treat us as if we did not sin because of Christ’s righteousness.
When we are commanded to forgive others as we have been forgiven, however, we don’t lose the memory as it is in our memory banks. But to forgive others as He has forgiven us, we must give up the right to hold that wrong against that person. We are required to treat them as if they didn’t commit that wrong against us and we cannot hold it against them.
To forget is to have lost a memory. To “remember not” is to not bring to the forefront of one’s mind a memory. Scripture did not use the word “forget” when referring to Him, it uses the word “remember not.” There is a huge difference in the meaning of ‘forget’ and ‘remember not.’
And that’s exactly what He did. He treats us as if we did not sin and does not hold our sin against us. It is as if it is forgotten as it is treated as forgotten. But God did not lose memory of it, He just treats us as if He has no memory of it. He remembers not!
Does God literally forget our sins? No, He does not. Many Christians claim that God forgets our sins but this is incorrect. If it is believed that God literally has no knowledge of a sin we commit, then we have knowledge of something that He doesn’t have. Let’s say we did something and we ask Him for forgiveness, He is merciful to forgive us as the above scripture maintains. However, we have not forgotten the sin, it is in our memory bank. If He literally forgets it, then we have something in our memory bank that He has no knowledge of. Obviously, this is silly.
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Good point. But if think he actually does ‘forget’ forgiven sin. Reason being, because of His supernatural Love, He is quick to truly forgive…as though it never happened. Then He moves on to more Love things. I don’t think He ever looks back on a forgiven sin. And that, literally, it never happened! A pure mind, as His, does not think on unlovely things. Sorry to say, our mind is far apart from His. Though He does desire us to have ‘the mind of Christ.’ Those who have their minds ‘transformed’ by the Holy spirit, too, do not dwell on trivial things such as forgiven sin.
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