Let's begin with a summary of what we have seen so far concerning Biblical forgiveness:
Forgiveness operates in relation to sin. When we sin against someone, we become indebted to them in some way (whether financially, or perhaps having damaged their reputation or injured them physically or in some other way). That debt, as long as it exists, brings about a state of enmity and alienation between the offender and the one who was wronged. This "victim" will feel disadvantaged, abused, unjustly treated, and will have a desire for reparation or even revenge. Resentfulness and malice easily breed in the heart of someone who believes they have been wronged but that the offender has escaped without proper consequences for their wrongdoing.
True forgiveness cancels, wipes out or blots out the debt so that it no longer is an obligation laid upon the one who sinned. If the debt is canceled, it follows that there is no continuing ground for enmity or alienation, so a restoration of the relationship (reconciliation) ought to follow. Now we are ready to build on this foundation in practical ways. In the balance of the post, we want to deal with one common misconception about forgiveness.
How often have you heard of someone saying something like this, "I will forgive you, but I can never forget what you did to me"? Can we find any way in which this concept of forgiveness flows from the Biblical framework we established?
If I have forgiven you, then the debt that caused our enmity and alienation is gone - it has been blotted out. If I declare my determination never to forget your offence against me, then it hasn't been blotted out at all and I am saying that as far as I am concerned, I will never allow it to be blotted out. It is still there, and so is the enmity and alienation that comes with it. So it may sound very spiritual and very humble to say "I will forgive you," but forgiveness that maintains a record of wrongs done is no forgiveness at all.
What can we learn from God in this regard? How does His forgiveness operate? First, see what he says is true of the forgiveness He extends to those whom He saves through Christ's work, and brings into the environment of New Covenant He has made with mankind:
"...For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:34
The writer to the Hebrews quotes from this very verse in Hebrews 10:17, but he adds a very important comment in verse 18:
...then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” 18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. (Hebrews 10:17-18).
In other words, in these two short verses we see forgiveness equated with forgetfulness and with complete cancellation of debt (no further offerings are required, because the offering of Christ fully wipes the record clean).
God couldn't say it in any clearer way. When He forgives sin, the debt is blotted out and He forgets it. Yes, it is a great mystery how an omniscient (all-knowing) God can forget anything. Perhaps the easiest way to begin to understand this is to look back at the verse we considered a couple of posts ago from Colossians 2:13-14.
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
The record of the debts of His people was made over to Jesus - nailed as the charge sheet that spelled out the grounds for His just death. And Jesus fully paid the debt that His people owed to God. He blotted it out. So if that long list of our offences has been rendered unreadable because it is completely covered by Christ's blood at Calvary, then it no longer features on God's "radar screen" when He looks at us - it is gone.
Consider another passage that says much the same thing, when God is talking through Isaiah about how His people have sinned against Him, even though He had been gracious in His dealings with them:
"I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins." (Isaiah 43:25)
It is this understanding of God's forgiveness that led David to pray in this way:
Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord! (Psalm 25:6-7)
See also Psalm 79:8, Isaiah 64:9, 65:17.
With God, then, there is a strong element of what might be described as forgetfulness when He blots out a debt of sin through the blood of Christ.
So how does all this apply in the life of a believer? Are we also to "forgive and forget" in the way that God does? Logically, the answer has to be "yes", since (as we have seen) forgiveness that doesn't forget is no forgiveness at all. Can we find any support for "forgive and forget" in Scripture, though? Again, the answer is "yes".
First, take a look at Ephesians 4:32: Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
So whatever is true concerning God's forgiveness of us in Christ is to be true in our forgiving brothers and sisters in the Lord. We will explore some other ramifications of this in later posts, but it seems clear that if God declares He will forget the sins of those He forgives, then we need to strive to do the same.
Next, look at 1 Peter 4:8: Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
Believers are to love each other. It is incompatible with the idea of love that we keep alive the memory of wrongs done to us by a brother or sister, and with them the almost inevitable brooding resentment and sense of injustice. If someone repents of their sin and asks for forgiveness, it is the loving thing for us to grant the forgiveness and cover over the sin - blot it out of our thinking.
Finally, consider 1 Corinthians 13:5, as the Greek text seems to say and is legitimately translated in the New International Version of the Bible: "Love..... does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs."
Again, we are in the sphere of Christian love and again, it is a characteristic of that love not to maintain a "record of debt" after a repentant person has asked us to forgive them. God keeps no record of our wrongs, seeing that they are wiped out through the blood of Christ. On what conceivable basis can we declare we have forgiven a brother or sister, and then hold a grudge against them? We have been reconciled to God and where there are signs of repentance, we must reconcile with those who have offended us.
Likewise, in the realm of church discipline, if the one disciplined for sin repents, then the church is not only to forgive that person for their sin, but they are to blot it out from their corporate memory and to reach out to comfort the repentant sinner. Otherwise, as we see in 2 Corinthians: 6-7 that the restored church member may be overwhelmed by sorrow (because it would be clear that they had not been completely forgiven.
Finally, having seen how the principle of "forgive and forget" works between God and man, and between believers, how should it operate where a believer is sinned against by an unbeliever? The answer has to be that it operates in the same way we have seen. After all, God forgave us when we were unbelievers, and Jesus commands us to love our enemies and pray for them. So when we see that there is sorrow over the offence on the part of the offender, we should gladly and willingly forgive them and forget the sin. We will go on to see that in determining what is true repentance, we cannot see the heart but in love we must give the benefit of the doubt and we must use the judgment of charity, all the time remembering how God has dealt with us so graciously in Christ!
So to conclude, God "forgets" when He forgives the repentant sinner, and we must forgive in exactly the same way, constrained by His love that is at work in us by the Spirit. This can be very difficult in practice, but it is clearly the Biblical approach!
