There are some things, which I have done over the course of my life, that I would just as soon forget ever happened . . . in fact, things I’d just as soon not even remember that I want to forget. Dumb moves . . . selfish acts . . . words better left unsaid . . . anger that should have been checked . . . wrongs for which “sorry” doesn’t seem enough. Even as I write this list, I cringe with memories I wish I never possessed. Those “things” are sins, iniquities, transgressions . . . the memories are embarrassment and shame. But it’s in that inventory, which I’d just as soon forget, that I’m reminded that, though I might remember them, the God of the new covenant does not.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, . . . I will put My laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. . . . they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.    (Hebrews 8:8-12 ESV)

Throughout the previous chapters of Hebrews, Jesus been portrayed as better in so many ways. Better than the angels . . . greater than Moses . . . possessing a better priesthood . . . engaged in a better ministry. And at the heart of it all are better promises . . . a new and better covenant.

In the passage I’m reading this morning, the writer to the Hebrews quotes from Jeremiah 31 . . . the prophetic promise of a new dynamic by which God and the people He desires as His own are brought into lasting fellowship. A covenant not dependent on the performance of men and women but based solely on the determined will and abundant grace of God. A covenant where “He will” because, in our own power, we can’t. And at the foundation of this new dynamic is the determination of the Holy God of Heaven to remember sins no more.

Not that they are ignored . . . or glossed over. But that He has determined in His great love to atone for them . . . to pay the price Himself for them . . . through the offering of His Son . . . through the Son’s offering of Himself . . . the Lamb of God, come to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). God no longer remembers my sin because His Son has born the judgment for it on Calvary’s cruel cross. The All-Knowing God can determine to no longer know my darkness because He knows that, by faith, I have been brought into marvelous light . . . that, by faith, I have availed myself of His abundant grace. And in that, He purposes that “I will remember their sins no more.”

I read in Isaiah this morning that the love which provides deliverance has “cast all my sins behind Your back” (Isa. 38:17). Though I might reflect on my past through the filter of my transgressions, my God has removed that filter from His gaze . . . putting it behind Himself . . . and looking upon me, instead, through the filter of the righteousness of Christ . . . or as the old song puts it, “. . . when He looks at me, He sees not what I used to be, but He sees Jesus!”

Though I might remember, He has determined to remember no more. Thought I might feel shame, I need not feel guilt, for “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2).

O’ praise God . . . for the new covenant . . . for the better promises. Blessed be the Son of God . . . who, through His shed blood, has washed away every sin — past, present, and future — and lives forever to make intercession for us that we might be “saved to the uttermost.” And thanks be to the Spirit of God . . . who illuminates His word . . . inscribing it upon our hearts . . . transforming us through the renewing of our minds.

Yeah, there are some things I’d just as soon forget ever happened. But then there are things, such as the promises and grace of God, that I will desire to ponder anew, with awe and amazement, for eternity.

To Him be all glory!