Does God Remember Our Sins or Forget Them?
00:00:00.000 | Daniel in London asks, "In Hebrews 8.12 it says God will remember our sins no more.
00:00:09.400 | However, in Matthew 12.36 it says we will have to give an account for every
00:00:13.780 | careless word spoken. If God remembers our sins no more, why do we have to give
00:00:17.940 | an account? Pastor John, how do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory
00:00:21.540 | verses?" That's a good question. And let's start with the fact that there
00:00:30.120 | will be a judgment of believers. Let's be careful though. There is therefore now
00:00:41.320 | no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8.1. And that "now" is
00:00:46.400 | very precious, right? There is now no condemnation, which means, as Jesus says,
00:00:53.240 | you will not come into judgment. That is, you will not have to be condemned ever.
00:00:59.760 | Your sentence is over. Not guilty. Righteous before the living God. And the
00:01:06.720 | reason, of course, is because we have been united to Christ. His punishment
00:01:12.280 | became our punishment, and his resurrection became our resurrection.
00:01:16.200 | We're already sitting at the right hand of God, and we have passed from death to
00:01:21.240 | life. And therefore, in that sense, we don't come into judgment. There's no
00:01:27.200 | condemnation. Nevertheless, clearly we're going to come into a judgment according
00:01:36.080 | to our works. Revelation 20.12 says there are books being written, and there's a
00:01:42.360 | book, the book of life, is the book in which if your name exists, you have life
00:01:48.400 | forevermore. And the books are where your works are written, and those books, I
00:01:53.480 | believe, will reveal the evidence that your name does belong in the book of
00:01:59.640 | life. But the book of life is the book of the life that was slain before the
00:02:04.440 | foundation of the world, and therefore the ground for being in the book of life
00:02:09.680 | is not that you've earned it or that your works merit it, but that the one who
00:02:15.800 | was slain is your Savior. So what then is this judgment according to
00:02:24.800 | works? And Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 3. He says, "If the work that
00:02:32.960 | anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. And if
00:02:38.480 | anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be
00:02:43.760 | saved only as through fire." So we lose rewards and we gain rewards according to
00:02:55.000 | whether we've built with wood, hay, or stubble, or gold, and silver, and precious
00:03:00.880 | stone. Now if that's true, if there's a rewarding and a loss of rewarding
00:03:07.720 | according to what we do, what in the world does it mean in the several texts
00:03:14.320 | where it says God doesn't remember our sins? Because it seems like, "Well, I've
00:03:20.600 | obviously sinned here, and those sins are going to be burned up at that moment. I'm
00:03:23.680 | going to lose reward for them." And so they were remembered at that time because
00:03:28.360 | they couldn't have any function to do that if they weren't remembered. And
00:03:32.560 | here's what I think it means. God's not remembering, I think, means God will
00:03:39.640 | never call our sins to mind. I'm replacing "call to mind" with "remember"
00:03:47.040 | as a ground for our condemnation. He will not call them to mind in any way that is
00:03:57.120 | destructive for us. In fact, I would go so far as to say it will always be only
00:04:03.480 | good for us, good for us, all things considered, if he calls them to mind this
00:04:10.960 | way. So that even the suffering of loss at the judgment, according to 1st
00:04:17.040 | Corinthians 3, 14, will be good, all things considered. So here's an analogy that
00:04:24.880 | helps me. What about we forgetting our sins? Should we forget our sins or
00:04:31.680 | remember our sins? Because in Philippians 3, Paul says, "Brothers, I do not consider
00:04:39.000 | that I've made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and
00:04:45.480 | straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on." So Paul says, "I forget. I'm not
00:04:51.040 | paralyzed by the horrible memories of the fact that I was killing
00:04:57.800 | Christians, I was throwing them in prison, I was shaking my fist in the face of God.
00:05:02.600 | I'm forgetting all that and I'm pressing on." However, he wrote to
00:05:09.760 | the Ephesians, chapter 2, "Remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh
00:05:16.760 | called the uncircumcision, remember that you were at that time separated from
00:05:23.600 | Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers of the covenants of
00:05:28.000 | promise, having no hope without God in the world." Well, Paul, which is it? Are we
00:05:34.960 | supposed to remember what it was like for us before we were saved? How horrible
00:05:41.440 | that was and what horrible things we did? Or are we supposed to forget those
00:05:46.000 | things which lie behind? And I think what Paul would say is, "We forget them and we
00:05:52.800 | remember them according to what's good for us." When he says, "Remember them,"
00:05:59.160 | he means, "Remember them for your humbling, not for your paralysis. Remember them for
00:06:05.000 | your deeper enjoyment of grace, not because of your destruction." And I think
00:06:12.240 | probably it's the same with God. God remembers and doesn't remember. That is,
00:06:18.280 | he calls to mind and applies, or he doesn't call to mind, according to what's
00:06:23.960 | good for us and what's good for for his glory. So God is God. He is omniscient. He
00:06:31.360 | knows everything past, present, and future. But the not remembering is a not calling
00:06:37.440 | to mind for our destruction and a not calling to mind for anything except what
00:06:43.240 | would work good for us. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this
00:06:47.720 | podcast. Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org, and
00:06:52.240 | visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of free books, articles,
00:06:55.800 | and sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Ranke,
00:06:59.360 | thanks for listening.
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