“The only thing that God says He forgets is our sins” by Sinclair Ferguson
“As we approach the end of the week, we’re going to think about something that we actually need to forget.
Yesterday, we talked about remembering God’s covenant with us because He remembers that covenant with us, and He promises that He will never forget it.
But I find it intriguing that in that covenant, He actually promises that there is something He will forget.
In the promise of the new covenant made in Jeremiah 31:34, quoted in the New Testament in Hebrews 8:12) because it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, God says, “I will remember their sins no more.”
He makes a similar promise in Isaiah 43:25:
“I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
We can think about it this way: the only thing that God says He forgets is our sins. He has blotted them out with the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.
That is a very important promise to remember because some of us– I suspect more than might be prepared to admit in public– are haunted by the memory of our past sins. Remember how that was true of King David.
In Psalm 51:3, he wrote that his sins were ever before him. He could be paralyzed by the memory of them.
Perhaps there were days when he was not thinking much about his past, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, the memory of his sins was like a fiery dart in his mind, paralyzing his sense of fellowship with God.
And so David needed to know day by day that his sins were blotted out and that the Lord remembered them no more.
In the United Kingdom, people sometimes invest in what are usually called gilts. Gilt-edged securities are very high-grade government-issued stock.
I think they are called that because originally the paper on which they were printed was gilt-edged, like some of the old Bibles. And I sometimes think that the devil, who is described as the accuser of the brethren, is an investor in guilt-edged stock– not gilt, but guilt.
When Satan tempts us to sin, he tells us, “This isn’t such a big deal.“
But then when we fail and fall, he capitalizes on our sin and emphasizes our guilt. He comes to us and almost seems to screw into us our deep incapacity and, as John Calvin once said, seeks to drive us to despair.
We can be paralyzed with shame, and it can be a frightening thing to experience. We’re like Joshua the high priest in Zechariah 3. There we are before God, clothed with filthy garments, and Satan is standing at our side accusing us.
We need to remember what happens next in that passage. The Lord said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan!” (Zechariah 3:2), and the angel of the Lord took off Joshua’s filthy garments.
He then spoke these beautiful, heart-melting words: “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments” (Zechariah 3:4).
What a picture that is of the believer clothed in the filthy garments of sin, but now, through Jesus Christ, clothed in pure vestments from head to toe.
I wonder if you can see yourself standing before the throne of God and hearing God say:
“But I don’t see any sin. I see only purity. I’ve covered your sin with the blood of Christ and clothed you in His righteousness.”
Does God really forget your sin as you trust Him? Yes, indeed. He tells us that He removes our sin as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12).
I wonder if you have forgotten what God says He will forget. God remembers our sins no more.
So perhaps the thing we need to remember most of all is the one thing the Lord tells us He remembers no more.
There is nothing more glorious than to be living a paralysis-free Christian life in the presence of the heavenly Father, knowing that He loves us more than we will ever know; and that He has given His Son to cover our sins; and that He says to us, “Your sins I remember no more.”
I do hope you know the peace that brings.”
–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2024), 41-42.
