I was visiting with an old friend the other day and he told me that he and his wife had just been with his mother-in-law to celebrate her 98th birthday. I asked how she was doing. My friend said her legs were wearing out so she just moved into an assisted living facility. “But her mind and memory are good,” my friend said; then adding, “Too good, in fact. She remembers every single stupid thing I did fifty years ago when I was a teenager and dating her daughter; and she reminds me of everything, every time I see her.”
God doesn’t do that. When we repent and ask for forgiveness, God says, “I will remember your sins no more.”
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Psalm 25:6-7 — Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good.
Hebrews 8:11-12 (quoting Jeremiah 31:34) – (God said), “No longer will they… say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Isaiah 43:24b-25 – (This is what the Lord says), “You have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses… (But) I am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.
Psalm 103:10-12 – (The Lord) does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
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Eternal Father, you alone can control the days that are gone and the deeds that are done. Remove from my burdened memory the weight of past years. Set me free from both the blindness of smug complacency and the crippling oppression of remorse. Grant that I may press on toward those things which you have set before me, knowing that I have been forgiven by the life, death, and resurrection of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
–Charles Henry Brent (1862-1929) Bishop in the Philippines
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Forgive me my sins, O Lord; the sins of my present and the sins of my past, the sins of my soul and the sins of my body, the sins which I have done to please myself and the sins which I have done to please others. Forgive me my casual sins and my deliberate sins, and those which I have tried to hide so that I have even hidden them from myself. Forgive me them, O Lord, forgive them all, and remember my sins no more. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
–Bishop Thomas Wilson (1663-1755)
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