He Who Forgets

Praise to our gracious God who forgets! 

God, in His mercy, promises to forget our sins! Forever! Over and over!

In Psalm 103 He tells us He has removed our sins "as far as the east is from the west!" So far the distance can't even be measured.

In Isaiah 38 He says He has placed all our sins behind His back -- where He can't even see them! And He doesn't keep a list to remind Him of our failures. He also tells us He doesn't want us to keep lists either, in 1 Corinthians 13.

And in Micah 7 He tells us He has "hurled" our iniquities into the deep sea!

He "hurled" them, not just dropped them overboard where they could possibly float and be retrieved later.

The deep sea we know about is the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench -- that's over 7 miles deep! (Mt. Everest is 5.5 miles high. So that deep sea is much deeper than Mt Everest is tall. No chance of retrieving them there!)

Looks like our God wants us to know for sure about His short memory. Looks like He wants us to be able to count on it!

A good example is Peter. When Jesus, after His resurrection, came to Peter, He didn't chastise or accuse him! He didn't bring his failures up at all! He didn't ask if He would ever be able to trust Peter again...no 'I told you so' comments! Jesus didn't even refer to Peter's sins...but, we are told, Peter wept bitterly. Peter remembered, and we weep with Peter.

We know "If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).

I prayed a silly prayer this morning: "Remember when I __________ ? Well, I've just done something worse..."  Silly --  God doesn't remember the older sin...and won't remember this one either.

Can we count on God?