Forgive and Forget

“My sacrificial gifts they offer in sacrifice and they eat flesh.”  YHWH does not accept them.  Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sin.  They will return to Egypt. Hosea 8:13 (translation J. A. Dearman)

Remember – We often think that once God forgives our sins, He forgets all about them.  Maybe that nice piece of comforting theology doesn’t quite cover the whole picture.  If you find the thought frightening, maybe you need to take a much closer look at Hosea.

Hosea delivers the message: “Israel!  You have made a mockery of worship.  You think that you can deal with your troubles and your guilt by increasing your prayers and your sacrifices.  You are wrong!  God is sick of your religious pretensions.  Until you come to Him with a repentant heart and changed behavior, He will not accept your rituals.”  Hosea spells out the dire consequences.  Those things which Israel hoped God would forget are now remembered.  Punishment is guaranteed.

Does Hosea’s grim alarm have a place in our world?  Without a doubt.  Consider the reaction of the country just a short ten years ago.  Millions flocked to churches.  Millions prayed (in many cases for the first time).  Millions evoked the name of the Lord to rescue America.  Ten years later America has returned to its place as one of the most wicked nations on earth (50 million dead infants cannot be ignored by legal manipulation).  What became of the great increase in moral and spiritual awareness?  Nothing!  God will remember.  God will remember the blood that cries out from the ground, the arrogance of our leaders, the abuse of our political conscience, the favoritism for advantage, the lying of our officials, the unabated pursuit of unsustainable “rights.”  God will remember.

In Hebrew thought, to forgive is not to blot something from memory.  It is painfully obvious that an omniscient God cannot “forget” in the sense of removing the events from consciousness.  But we seem to conveniently ignore that logical fact.  To forget is to not act on what it brought to mind.  In other words, forgetting is a behavioral term, not a mental one.  When God forgets, He determines not to act according to the dictates of the circumstances.  When God forgives, He decides to forget that our behavior deserves punishment.  He does not remove the awareness of the sin from consciousness.  He just doesn’t carry through on the consequences.

But when God remembers terrible things happen.  To remember is to bring to consciousness circumstances that require action and to proceed with that action.  When God remembers sin, He does something about it.  Oh, do we wish He would forget our trespasses!  But how can He when we do not remember Him?  Once again we arrive at that great biblical principle:  the reversal of behavior.   If we do not remember God, He will remember us.  If we forget, He will not forget.  If we want God to forget, we must remember.  What is the punishment for not remembering?  Israel is sent back into bondage.  I shudder to think what that will mean for us.

Topical Index:  remember, zakar, forget, shakah, Hosea 8:13