Forgetful

One of the wonderful promises that we have from God is that He forgives and forgets sin. "I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins" (Isa 43:25). How wonderful! So while I am pretty good at remembering my own sin, God inflicts Himself with some divine form of Alzheimer's, with some sort of supernatural selective recall where not only does He not remember my sin, but He also doesn't pay attention when I remember my sin. "Dear God," I might pray, "I still feel so bad for that particular sin. Please, please, forgive me." And He says, "What sin? I don't know what you're talking about." Right? Oh, wait ... that doesn't really make sense, does it? So do we have an addle-brained God with selective amnesia or are we failing to understand what these kinds of statements mean?

In Hebrew, the word for "remember" is zakar and means "To mark or, by implication, to mention." In the Hebrew usage, remembering is not our version of "calling to mind". Instead, it means to focus attention on and to act. Take, for instance, this example: "But God remembered Noah ... and the water subsided" (Gen 8:1). Whew! Lucky thing for Noah! God had forgotten Noah for awhile and then, some time after the flood had started, God was sitting over a cup of tea and suddenly called to mind Noah! Who knows what would have happened if God hadn't remembered him? No, that's silly. When it says that God "remembered Noah", it means that He focused attention on Noah and acted. But particularly in terms of "remembering sin", the term is not in reference to "calling sin to mind", but always punishing sin, like this example: "Thus says the LORD concerning this people: 'They have loved to wander thus; they have not restrained their feet; therefore the LORD does not accept them; now He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.'" (Jer 14:10). We see here that God didn't forget their iniquity for awhile and then, suddenly, called it back to memory. No, His "remember their iniquity" was to "punish their sins". That is, the idea is to mark sin and act on it. It is not a matter of recall.

God does not "remember sin". That means that God does not focus on our sin or punish it. It does not mean He cannot recall it. Look, we have a similar version of "remember" in English. Perhaps it's a little archaic, but I'm sure you would understand if I said to someone, "Bob, remember me to your wife." Does that mean that Bob's wife didn't recall who I was or that I existed? Not at all. It simply meant that I was asking Bob to remind his wife of my good will. God doesn't recall our sins by pointing them out and acting on them. He doesn't dwell on them and He doesn't bring them to our attention. They're put behind Him. That's the idea. They're gone, as far as the east is from the west (Psa 103:12). And that's simply marvelous!