Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith
Monday, July 23, 2007 at 06:55AM 
July 23
Absolutely No Remembrance
And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews 10:17)
According to this gracious covenant the Lord treats His people as if they had never sinned. Practically, He forgets all their trespasses. Sins of all kinds He treats as if they had never been, as if they were quite erased from His memory. O miracle of grace! God here doth that which in certain aspects is impossible to Him. His mercy worketh miracles which far transcend all other miracles.
Our God ignores our sin now that the sacrifice of Jesus has ratified the covenant. We may rejoice in Him without fear that He will be provoked to anger against us because of our iniquities. See! He puts us among the children; He accepts us as righteous; He takes delight in us as if we were perfectly holy. He even puts us into places of trust; makes us guardians of His honor, trustees of the crown jewels, stewards of the gospel. He counts us worthy and gives us a ministry; this is the highest and most special proof that He does not remember our sins. Even when we forgive an enemy, we are very slow to trust him; we judge it to be imprudent so to do. But the Lord forgets our sins and treats us as if we had never erred. O my soul, what a promise is this! Believe it and be happy.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Reader Comments (2)
His take on this subject is interesting - in the strictly doctrinal sense, he's right about our position before God: when we accept Christ, His shed blood did more than cover our sin; it forgave it (wiped it out) and God remembers it no more.
On the other hand, since we are still on earth, we still bear the effects (or consequences) of our sinful choices - those that naturally flow from the choices we make unless God chooses to suspend natural law and allow a different result.
The Bible says "forgive as Christ has forgiven you," recognizing that in Christ we are clearly and completely forgiven. But how does that affect consequences of other people sinning against us?
Proverbs talks about wisdom and warns of the dangers of ignoring it, and I don't think the two concepts are inconsistent, since they deal with different states - the righteousness we get to rely on before God is perfect and unchangeable and irrevocable, since by Christ's death and resurrection was completely sufficient to pay the penalty of sin.
However, even though we are perfect in Christ's righteousness, we still bear the effects of sin and the sinful choices we make.
So when Spurgeon says, "Even when we forgive an enemy, we are very slow to trust him; we judge it to be imprudent so to do," if we truly forgive as God does (i.e., not acting toward someone we have forgiven as if it never happened), his implication that there is something wrong with our judgment in light of God's grace seems contradictory to what the Bible says about the natural consequences of sin.
I don't know if that makes a lot of sense - it does in my head, but it's harder to articulate than I thought it would be.....
Yes, Cheryl,
It does make sense and I think you articulated it very well indeed.