A recent “Pickles’ comic strip showed the old man Earl and his good friend sitting on the front steps. Earl said, “I try to forget mistakes I’ve made in the past.”

            The friend answered, “Why is that Earl?”

            His response: “I’m married, that’s why.”

            The last panel shows Earl saying, “There’s no sense in two people remembering the same thing.”

            It is true, isn’t it, that others often remember our mistakes even more than we do.

            Isn’t it great, though, that God doesn’t treat His children that way!

            The Hebrew writer speaks at length about the superiority of the new covenant of Christ over the old covenant. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest” (Hebrews 8:10-11). Then notice what he says about the way God forgives” “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

            How wonderful that God is a merciful God, and One Who truly remembers our iniquities no more! When God forgives, He really forgives and forgets. Can we follow His example as we forgive? In his book, Love Must Be Tough, James Dobson quotes Archibald Hart as saying, “Forgiveness is surrendering my right to hurt you for hurting me.” William Arthur Ward, in Thoughts of A Christian Optimist, says, “We are most like beasts when we kill. We are most like men when we judge. We are most like God when we forgive.”

Remember No More

by Bob Prichard

www.oxfordchurchofchrist.com