Jeremiah 31:34 says “No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the last of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” If we want to live a life in service to God, we must understand who our Creator is. As Christians, we are called to make time to get to know God more and more each day. There are two comforting thoughts that God has shared with us that will help us trust Him more. The first thing is that 1) God remembers his promises, and the second thing is that 2) God forgets our sins. We will look at these two characteristics of God, and we will look at how understanding these traits can benefit our Christian walks.
One of the most fundamental things we must understand about God is that God remembers His promises. The Bible shows us countless examples of God working in ways that man could not begin to understand and keeping promises that man would have long forgotten. In Genesis chapter 17, God promises Abraham that he will be blessed with many descendants. God establishes a covenant saying that He will make Abraham a great nation. As we continue reading in Matthew chapter 1, we find that the lineage of Jesus Christ can be traced back to Abraham and the promise that God made. Numerous times in the Old Testament, God promises to send a savior, a perfect sacrifice, to wash away the sins of His people. Despite the overwhelming number of times God’s creations have turned their backs on their Creator, the promise of Jesus was fulfilled. No matter how many times we, God’s people, have sinned against Him and betrayed the One who gave us life, God still gives all of us the offer of eternal life through the sacrifice of His son. Romans 15:8 says
“Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers.”
From the time the world began to the time of Jesus’s birth, the greatest gift the world has ever been given took thousands of years to come to fruition, but nonetheless the promise of Jesus came to be. This sacrifice serves as an example of God’s unending mercy and willingness to keep his promises. God has promised us that if we keep his commandments, we will have eternal life with Him in Heaven. After all these years, promises made to first century Christians are still valid today. In 2 Peter 3:8-9 we read
“...that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
We can know that the promises we read about in the Bible are real and that we will benefit from God’s wisdom if we follow Him. We must trust God’s timing and know that He will answer His promises at the right time.
The second thing we must understand about God is that God forgets our sins. We will never mess up so badly that the Lord will not be willing to forgive us if we return to Him in repentance. Isaiah 59:1 says
“Behold the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; not his ear heavy that it cannot hear.”
If we confess our sins to God and repent, He will hear us and wash away our sins. When Peter denied Christ three times, on the night of Jesus’s crucifixion, God still forgave Peter. God did not say that Peter had too much sin to be forgiven. God is never too angry to forgive someone asking for forgiveness according to His word. When God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah ran in the opposite direction. Jonah ran so far away from God that he found himself in the belly of a whale. In chapter 2, when Jonah prayed to God, God did not find Jonah too far gone to be saved. God heard Jonah’s prayer and when the fish vomited Jonah onto dry land, God gave Jonah the same instructions He gave him the first time. In the Bible, we are shown countless times an ability possessed by God that no man possesses. Other people may forgive our sins, but they can never truly forget them. When God forgives us of wrong things we as Christians have done and repented of, He loves us as if nothing has happened. As Christians, when we ask for forgiveness and repent of our sins, we can be confident that we are in a right relationship with God. We should not allow the regret of forgiven sins keep us from moving forward in service to God. 1 Peter 1:8 says
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
But God doesn’t stop here. He continues in verse 9, saying,
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
We must know that God has forgiven us and that He will continue to forgive us if we are living a life that glorifies Him. A lot of times, our inability to forgive ourselves after we have been forgiven by God comes from a lack of trust. We do not trust God when He clearly tells us “I am He who blots out your transgressions.” If we are truly to serve God, we must learn to trust Him when he promises to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
When we trust God’s ability to keep His promises and forgive us of our sins, we can trust His providence. We cannot begin to have true peace in our lives if we cannot accept His forgiveness and the promises He has made us. Jeremiah 29:11 says,
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
We can clearly see how understanding the fact that God remembers His promises and forgets our sins can help us trust him more in our Christian walk. Throughout His word, God tells us many things that will help us better understand Him. But I think one of the most comforting promises God makes us can be found in Isaiah 43:25, when He says,
“I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; I will not remember your sins.”
Our Lord has proven to us time and time again that He is a God who is merciful and gracious, and that He has promised from the beginning of time that all things will work together if we trust in Him. I would like to leave you with these verses found in Hebrews 10:22-23.
“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for He is faithful that promised.”