What God Remembers - And What He Forgets! [Heb 8:12]
11th November, 2025
If you are of European or American background, 11th November is a significant date for remembrance of those who lost their lives in the two World Wars. What we are remembering are real events. Real lives lost, families devastated by real and terrible grief, real freedoms gained and so on. On and around 11th November, people wear poppies to remember the war dead. Every town and village has a war memorial to their war dead, such was the terrible scale of the losses - as the inscription on war memorials says “Lest we forget”. Perhaps a warning to future generations not to let a major war start again.
The Bible encourages God’s people to remember things too.
The feasts and events in Israel’s religious year were set up as ceremonial, visual, annual reminders of what God had done to save Israel. Israel were to remember what the Lord had done for them - it was indeed a command. Like the Passover reminding Israel every year of their deliverance by God from Egyptian slavery; or the Feast of Tabernacles to remind Israel of their protected sojourn in the wilderness for 40 years; or the 12 large stones taken out of the Jordan to remind Israel of their entry into the Promised Land as a nation of 12 tribes; even the layout of the Jerusalem temple was a reminder of the holiness of God. So they could remember what God had done for them.
These were real events in history which they were to look back to. Christianity is an historical religion, a New Covenant based on real events that happened in human history - chief among them being the virgin birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Some churches recite the so-called Apostles’ Creed Sunday-by-Sunday to help us remember these great truths of Christian doctrine.
Creeds repeat and bring to memory the key events of the Christian faith, so we don’t forget. We remember them, and in dark moments creeds can reassure us of our Christian faith. We don’t necessarily understand all these supernatural events, but we believe them and we remember them.
I remember the day I was converted. Night turned to day: A complete transformation in myself and in how I understand the world, from then on centred on Jesus. We need to remember things because we forget. I don’t have a good memory but I have a good forgettery alas.
But the One who does the most remembering in the Bible is God himself. God remembers covenants. He remembered his covenant with Noah during the flood, and brought the ark to dry land on Mt Ararat; he remembered the covenant he made with Abraham, which is why he preserved Israel even when it deserved to be swept away throughout its turbulent history; he remembered his covenant with King David and preserved the line of David even when it was at its most wicked.
But for the Christian, there’s one thing that God does not remember, one thing that God forgets - and that is the sin of the Christian believer. Under this New Covenant in which we stand by faith, when he sees our sins he remembers the righteousness of His Beloved Son Jesus. Quoting the prophet Jeremiah, the author of Hebrews reassures us.
Heb 8:11And they shall not teach, each one his neighbour
and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’,
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful towards their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more.”
This is why we in the Christian faith remember what Jesus did on the cross, dying in our places so God would not remember our sins any more … Lest we forget. Alleluia!