THE PRIVILEGE OF FORGETTING.
The privilege of forgetting is a real privilege. There are few of us who live lives so perfect that we are not prepared to appreciate this fact. This privilege is pre-eminently a Christian privilege; it is the Christian who will profit by it most. “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,” said the apostle Paul, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 3: 13, 14. This was written for our instruction and our encouragement. It is our privilege to forget “those things”—the sins, mistakes, failures—which are behind, and turn our minds to the brighter things that are before. The eternal purpose of God—His purpose for eternity—is that the sins of His people shall be blotted out, and forgotten. “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jer. 31: 34. “Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.” Acts 3: 19. The sins of the righteous are not merely to be passed over—set aside—like a pardoned crime; they will be forgotten. God says He will forget them, and this means that the righteous will not themselves be able to remember their own sins; for no man, nor angel, can remember a thing which God has forgotten. “In the time of trouble, if the people of God had unconfessed sins to appear before them while tortured with fear and anguish, they would be overwhelmed; despair would cut off their faith, and they could not have confidence to plead with God for deliverance. But while they have a deep sense of their unworthiness, they have no concealed wrongs to reveal. Their sins have gone beforehand to judgment, and have been blotted out; and they cannot bring them to remembrance.”—“Great Controversy,” page 620. And thus will the redeemed saints be able to feel, as they enter the gates of the heavenly city, that they have a right to be there. They have a “right to the tree of life.” To the sinner, heaven, with all its beauty and glory, would be a place of torment. The remembrance of even one sin in heaven, amid the spotless purity of those who have never sinned, and in the presence of the infinite God, would be a source of torment. To know in heaven that God and angels were conscious of the sins we had committed on the earth, would mar all its attractiveness and spoil our happiness. Conscious of sin, we could not look upon the face of God. In the wisdom and love of God, this is not to be. No one who enters the New Jerusalem will be able to call one of his transgressions to remembrance, nor will any other being in heaven be able to do so. The redeemed saint will be there as one who had never sinned, both in his own sight, in the sight of angels, and of God himself. For he has, in fact, been created new, and without sin, in Christ. And toward this blessed goal the Christian’s face is now turned; and “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before,” he presses forward with rejoicing to the mark and prize of his high calling of God in Christ Jesus.