Our oldest son sent me a text this week that read, “Dad, the story of you, the police officers and the water balloons is now the favorite story in my house.”
I wrote back, “Forgiven, but not forgotten.”
This is another challenge to trust.
When Abraham was an old man and his wife was too old for it to be physically possible for her to have children, God made a promise to Abraham that they would have a child. In spite of the physical impossibility, Abraham believed God. His belief is why the Bible refers to him as the father of the faithful.
There are many factors of human nature that make forgiveness seem like an impossible promise.
One of them is our memory.
How can I be forgiven if I still remember it? Forgiveness is God’s promise to us through our faith in Jesus, not our ability to shut it out of our mind.
Likewise, our forgiveness of others is not in our ability to forget what they have done. It is in the choice we make about how we will treat them after we have granted them our forgiveness.
It is the same with God. His promise of remembering our sins no more is not a statement about His knowledge nor His ability to remember. It is a statement about His promise to no longer hold the matter against us. It is as if it had never happened when it is covered by the blood of Jesus.
In Christ we are forgiven, even if we can’t forget.