“And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17).

Of all God’s marvelous promises, this promise that God will forget all our sins is surely one of the most amazing of all. How can the omniscient one fail to remember anything, especially all the sins we have committed against Him and His creation. Yet this is His promise! “Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).

This can only be, of course, because Jesus Christ “bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (I Peter 2:24), and “He was manifested to take away our sins” (I John 3:5). Once the Lord returns and judgment is past, all sin is forgotten, and righteousness will endure forever.

There is a beautiful foregleam of this truth in the New Testament references to the Old Testament men and women of faith, especially in the “faith chapter,” Hebrews 11. This chapter notes the great works of faith of Abraham, of Jacob, Moses, Gideon, Samson, David, and others, but there is never a mention of any of their sins. Noah’s drunkenness, or Abraham’s deception with Sarah, or Jacob’s lie to his father, or Moses’ anger, or David’s adultery, or any of the other sins which are fully recounted in the Old Testaments are never mentioned in Hebrews 11 or anywhere else in the New Testament.

God is, indeed, a gracious and forgiving God to all those who receive Christ as their sin-bearing Savior. “For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:11,12).

Because Christ has borne them away, our sins and iniquities will be eternally forgiven and forgotten by our heavenly Father. HMM