Someone asked me where it says in the Bible that God 'forgets' sin. Below is my response. But first, let me ask your indulgence for my repetition of this issue. It is, for me, as if I never knew this truth, although I've read the entire Bible dozens of times. I almost feel as excited as I first did when I discovered Jesus is the Messiah my people (the Jews) have been looking for for more than 2000 years!
So, here is my response to the question where God tells us He FORGETS our sins:
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THAT is the good news about the gospel (I know that is redundant. Gospel, in the Greek, means ‘Good News.) God, in His omniscience, chooses to forget our confessed sins, to never, ever bring them up to us again. There are multiple scripture texts, of which I cite only a few below. I also write about it on my bog:
Here are some Scriptures texts wherein God promises to forget our sins:
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“It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.” Isaiah 43:25
“See, days are coming—oracle of the LORD—when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke my covenant, though I was their master—oracle of the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days—oracle of the LORD. I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 They will no longer teach their friends and relatives, “Know the LORD!” Everyone, from least to greatest, shall know me—oracle of the LORD—for I will forgive their iniquity and no longer remember their sin. Jeremiah 31: 31-34
The writer to the Hebrews quotes the above prophecy from Jeremiah: (in fact, the entire context of Hebrews 10 is important to this question of God purposely, in His omniscience, forgetting our confessed sins): 16 “This is the covenant I will establish with them after those days, says the Lord: ‘I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them upon their minds,’” 17 he also says: “Their sins and their evildoing I will remember no more.” Hebrews:16-17)
(To further make that point, the Hebrews writer quotes Jeremiah also in chapter 8:12)
There are also numerous texts wherein God promises to: ‘Purge’ (Greek, Obliterate, purify) our sins, such as 1 John 1:9; To cast our sins into the depths of the ocean (Micah 7:19); To cast them as far as east is from west (Psalm 10311-12). And I also love what He says in Isaiah 1:18 – that our sins are now ‘white as snow.’
This truth from God's lips and written for us by the prophets and the apostles has grabbed hold of me. It is as if (for me) my spirit finally understand what God has been trying to say to me for fifty years!
God has purposely – and purposefully – forgotten the worst sins you and I have ever committed and of which we have confessed and repented. AND, as I wrote in those blog posts I cited above, God will never, ever hold us accountable or punishable for those sins.
Why would He? He has forgotten them! Oh, hallelujah. Thanks be to God!
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