"Remember!"

I want to look over the subject of remembering. Remembrance comes up in many portions of the Bible and we need to have a basic understanding of what remembering means.

Lets start with the idea that you must forgive and forget. On the surface, it sounds as though there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with suggesting that we must forgive and forget when it come to offenses committed against us. After all, isn’t forgiveness “the Christian way”? How could anybody dispute that idea?

But will we forget the wrong done to us? Of course not! It would be ridiculous to think that the Bible teaches us that we have to have amnesia regarding certain experiences in our lives. Forgiving someone may mean a lot of things, but it certainly doesn’t mean that we literally forget what has happened. Not even God does that!

Wait a minute, you say! Doesn’t the Bible say that God forgives our sins and forgets them? No. It says that He doesn’t remember them. Although many think the two are the same thing, they aren’t.

To forget means just that. It means that God would have no ability to bring to mind the forgotten thing. Do you really want to limit God like that? He just doesn’t REMEMBER our sins.

What does it mean to remember? Look at the word itself. It is composed of two parts: re- and member. Re- is a prefix that means “to return to a previous condition” or “the repetition of a previous action.” The word member means “one of a group; one that belongs, a part of the body.” So the accurate and literal meaning of the word “remember’ is to return something to a previous condition by making it belong to or join again with something. If I cut off my finger, the doctor may be able to re-member it if I get it to him in time.

What the Bible says is that God separates our sins from us forever. He doesn’t forget, but He does remember them no more. He will forever refuse to join our sins to us or our past guilt to Himself. He will not re-member them!

Now back to OUR forgiving and forgetting of someone else. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It is an intentional choice to release a person from all obligation they may have toward me as a result of any offense they have committed against me.

Why do we forgive? It’s not primarily for the sake of the other person, but for our own sake. In Isaiah 43:5, God said, “I even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake.” It is the nature of our loving God to forgive, and that’s why He has done it. You could replace the words “for My own sake” with “because it’s just my nature to do it”. God would have been inconsistent if He hadn’t forgiven you. After all, He is a forgiving God by nature.

Christ and His nature live in us now as Christians (see 2 Peter 1:4). We forgive others because His nature is within us and to do any less is to act in a way that is contrary to our authentic selves. We forgive for our own sakes so that we won’t be poisoned by bitterness that grows in the absence of forgiveness.

Let’s talk now about that familiar passage which we hear so often when we receive Communion.

“The Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way He took the cup also after supper saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25).

What did He mean by that? He meant, “As often as you partake of this communion meal in the future, do it in a way that you are appropriating the reality of your connection to Me.” He wasn’t telling believers that when we take communion, we are to think in our minds and pretend that we are there watching His crucifixion. He is telling us to re-member. We are to affirm by faith that we are inseparably joined to Him, and we affirm that reality again and again when we partake of the elements.

Some would have us reflect on or re-member our sinfulness at communion time. Although past sins may flash into our mind at communion time, we are not to re-member them! We are not to try to re-attach them to ourselves. Our old nature of sin have been thrown out and replaced with the divine nature of God in Christ. Communions should be a joyous time of re-membering who we are in union with Christ within us – not a sober time of sin reflection.

In conclusion, don’t set an impossible goal for yourself to forgive and forget. Your Father doesn’t expect that of you. Just do as God does: He forgives and then doesn’t re-member anymore! Make the choice from within your divine nature in Christ not to attempt to bring the offense up again. It will allow you to get on with your life in a way that you’re not contaminated in your attitude, mood, or perspective because of the past. That’s a good reason to do it.

Most importantly, it will allow you to act in a way that is consistent with who you truly are – a child of God whose desire is to honor your Father by giving to others the same forgiveness that you have received from Him. That’s the BEST reason to do it.

And at the communion table, joyously re-member your union with Jesus Christ who is forever joined to your human spirit. In the trenches of our human life, our thoughts may be temporarily drawn away from who we really are. But God will never really let us FORGET this and will bring us back into RE-MEMBRANCE.