Forgive and forget, or so the saying goes.
But does forgiving really mean forgetting? Is that what God commands us to do as Christians – to forget the bad things other people have done to us?
To answer those questions, we need to look more closely at how God forgives us. God promised the Prophet Jeremiah, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
That sounds like God forgets about our sins, right? But look closely. God doesn’t forget our sins. He chooses to remember them no more.
There’s a difference. God knows everything. He doesn’t forget anything. It’s not that our sins have slipped his mind and one day he will remember them.
God chooses to remember our sins no more because of Jesus. He sends them away from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). He tosses them into the deepest depths of the ocean (Micah 7:19), never to think on them again.
Because Jesus suffered the punishment of your sins in your place, God has let them go forever. He won’t start thinking about them one day and get angry all over again. He won’t hold them over your head and say, “Remember what you did?”
You are forgiven forever because of Jesus.
And that’s the kind of forgiveness God wants us to show to others. “Love keeps no record of wrongs,” the Apostle Paul tells us (1 Corinthians 13:5). Forgiving doesn’t mean you necessarily have to forget. It means that when you do remember, you don’t hold it over their head.
Forgiveness means that when you remember, you don’t let all the anger and hurt come rushing back into your heart.
Soldiers returning from war often suffer from PTSD – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The struggle of those who suffer from PTSD is that each time they remember a traumatic event, they relive it in their minds. They can’t remember what happened without feeling the horror, pain and fear all over again.
In a way, we all suffer from a type of PTSD. When we remember the horrible and hurtful things somebody has done to us, all the anger, hurt and resentment tend to come rushing back.
Forgiving means letting go of that anger. Forgiving means fighting against the resentment that wants push its way back into your heart. Forgiving means not holding it over their head and saying, “Remember what you did?”
But that’s hard. Forgiving is one of the hardest things God asks us to do as Christians. The only way we can really let go of the anger, the only way we can fight against the resentment, the only way we can truly forgive is by remembering.
When you struggle to forgive, remember all the hurtful, ugly and shameful things you have thought, said and done in your life. Remember all that Jesus suffered for you to pay for your failings. Remember how God keeps on patiently forgiving you every day because of Jesus – how he chooses to remember your sins no more.
Remembering how much God has forgiven us is the secret to truly being able to forgive those who have done us wrong. May God help each of us to forgive as he has forgiven us.
September 26, 2020 at 12:00PM
https://www.news-journal.com/features/religion/schroer-forgive-and-forget/article_4ddd522c-ff2e-11ea-b3b7-839c6575250b.html
Schroer: Forgive and forget? | Religion - Longview News-Journal
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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