As I’ve alluded to in previous posts, I was raised with some dubious beliefs about God. One such belief purports that God actually forgets our sins – as in cannot even remember them – which is a convenient ‘truth’ for anyone who chooses to continue in sin, believing, ‘God doesn’t remember so he doesn’t even know that I keep sinning again and again.’ This belief stems from the scripture originally in Jeremiah, and referenced in Hebrews. “No longer will any of them teach his fellow community member or his brother, ‘Know Adonai’; for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest; because I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33(34), Hebrews 8:12, Complete Jewish Bible)
Since we know that God does not change (Hebrews 13:8), we can test this belief within scripture. Second Chronicles describes the evil of King Manasseh from God’s perspective; “He rebuilt the shrines that his father Hezekiah had demolished; he erected altars for the Baals and made sacred posts. He bowed down to all the host of heaven and worshiped them, and he built altars [to them] in the House of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “My name will be in Jerusalem forever.” He built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the House of the Lord. He consigned his sons to the fire in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, and he practiced soothsaying, divination, and sorcery, and consulted ghosts and familiar spirits; he did much that was displeasing to the Lord in order to vex Him.” (II Chronicles 33:3-6, Tanakh).
Manasseh eventually repented, and God forgave. “In his distress, he entreated the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to Him, and He granted his prayer, heard his plea, and returned him to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord alone was God.” (II Chronicles 33:12-13, Tanakh).
During the reign of his great-grandson, King Jehoiakim, God punished Israel for the sins of King Manasseh. “In his [King Jehoiakim] days, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years…He let them loose against Judah to destroy it…All this befell Judah at the command of the Lord, who banished [them] from His presence because of all the sins that Manasseh had committed, and also because of the blood of the innocent that he shed. For he filled Jerusalem with the blood of the innocent, and the Lord would not forgive.” (II Kings 24:1-4, Tanakh) If God truly forgets, then how is it that after King Manasseh repented, he still brought destruction on Israel, explicitly stating it is because of the sins of King Manasseh?
It is well documented that the children of Israel repeatedly sinned against God by following foreign gods, repented and returned to God (Judges 3:7-9, 12-15, 4:1-3). But it’s clear he didn’t actually forget. “…‘See! The days are coming,’ says Adonai, ‘when I will establish over the house of Isra’el and over the house of Y’hudah [Judah] a new covenant.’ “‘It will not be like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by their hand and led them forth out of the land of Egypt; because they, for their part, did not remain faithful to my covenant; so I, for my part, stopped concerning myself with them.’ says Adonai.” (Hebrews 8:8-9, Complete Jewish Bible; Jeremiah 31:30(31))
God plans to lovingly bring them back to himself with a new covenant (Hebrews 8:10-12). God did not forget their previous sins, and it becomes clear that God is not amnesic. His choice to “remember their sins no more” speaks of not holding their sins against them, and is analogous to court records being expunged. The process of expungement removes the criminal history from a person’s file entirely as if the crimes never happened. This is different than amnesia.
Yeshua came as the perfect sacrificial lamb, incurring the punishment for our sin, thus expunging our record of sin. This is a loving gift from a holy and perfect God who knows everything. He has the power to forgive and not hold our sins against us when we acknowledge and confess our sin, turning from our sinful ways by the power of the Holy Spirit through His Son, Yeshua our Lord, Savior, and Messiah.