Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
Many Christians keep skeletons in their closets. They hide secret sin in their hearts. Every time some reversal comes into their lives they convince themselves that it is due to sin/s they committed in the past. Because of this they carry guilt complexes. Devoid of liberty they disqualify themselves from serving the Lord.
Forgetting those things which are behind
Some of us live in past regret. We grieve over bad choices. We rehearse our failures and sin over and over to ourselves. There seems to be a compulsion to constantly punish ourselves for those failures lest we fall again. People who practice this belief system cripple their Christian lives.
Others nurse injustices done to them. They cannot disengage from their hurts. They cannot allow themselves to forgive. The injustice may have transpired twenty years ago but it is still present in the mind as if it were yesterday. "It galls me every time I think about it. I just can’t get over it." Every time we think about the injury acid pours into our system.
Some marriages are awash with recriminations. They never let the other person forget their failure. It seems almost impossible to cease and desist from hurling barbs. This creates an almost hopeless domestic relationship. This violates a fundamental value in God’s economy. The value extends beyond forgiveness; the value is to forget. If they do not own this value then the marriage is doomed to perpetual misery. We might as well lock them in a room and let them scream at each other for the rest of their lives.
The word "forget" means literally to forget upon or over, that is, we are to forget in consequence of something else. We can get over past hurts because of something more important. Since forgiveness is ours by Christ what consequence is there to past hurts? Is it worth stewing over past wrongs in the light of Christ’s forgiveness? Assign to oblivion every hurt of the past in view of the cross.
We need to forget the wrong and move on. We should forgive and forget. If someone should confront us that this damages our spiritual life, we say, "Well, I will forgive but I won’t forget." Then we will die spiritually before our time. Temporal spiritual death occurs in the believer because he/she wants to punish the other person for what they have done. They do not want to release the anger hold against the other person. Growth is impossible with such an attitude.
The Greek indicates that we personally benefit by forgetting past failures. We also benefit by forgetting the failures of others. We surmise that there is benefit in rehearsing our failures. We believe there is some worth in the memory of pain, "If I remember what I did I will never do it again." We believe it gives us security and a sense of control if we keep it active in our mind. However, this is what constitutes an obsession. The need to control uncertainties, unanticipated pain is a losing battle. The desire to control pain by negative thinking will lead us into destructive spiritual bondage. God says there is benefit in forgetting the past, not remembering it. Forgetting will liberate us from the bondage of thinking about it. We are then free from occupation with it.
God’s solution is the opposite of obsession. It is the polar diametrical opposite of evoking memory to control pain. God’s answer is I John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." It is a matter of believing that God, not our memories. We cannot continue to grow and mature as a believer as long as we refuse to forget.
PRINCIPLE: Forgetting the past is an act of faith.
APPLICATION: Only mature believers can forget past hurts. The ability to confess a sin and believe that God rendered that sin into oblivion takes confidence in God’s promises. Others many remember my sins but I have rendered them into spiritual amnesia. The ability to assign into amnesia confessed sin is the principle Paul is referring to here.
A spouse may remember every offense in the marriage. They may reach into the garbage can and pull out your failures. That is a grab for power lust. It is one-up-manship. To get the best of the argument we pull garbage out to gain control of the argument. The principle is "I will get the best of the argument by putting you down. I will excuse my failure by drawing attention to your failure."
A mature believer does not enter this cycle of destruction. Mature believers assign their past and the past of others into amnesia. How ridiculous it would be if a neighbor came to our front door and said, "Look what I found in your garbage can" Any relationship in life calls for criticism. Inevitably we will do something that others will criticize. You can say "Come on in and we will talk about it" or you can run out to their garbage can to see what you can find. Typically, in arguments between husband and wife, each goes into the garbage can to find a bigger piece of garbage. Is that the way you want to live?
That is the way we live when we do not forget the past. We excuse our failures on the basis of someone else’s failures. Once we confess sin we should never look back on that sin. Once others have confessed their sin we should never hold them to their sin. That takes strong faith.
Thanks for the commentary Dr. Richison.
But I am not sure I can read this without some sort of questioning. You profess many times here that we must go beyond forgiveness and then forget the wrongs that have happened to us or that have been done to use by others. In all practicality I find that very difficult to endorse or practice.
I do not say this because I cannot cope with the idea of letting go of hurt or re-punishing myself. Rather I think that the biggest reason I cannot just forget is because my memory will not physically allow it. Similar to how war veterans suffer Post Traumatic Stress because they cannot forget horrors they experienced or saw, the mental stress of a very negative situation in life (divorce, infidelity, etc.) can cause memories to stay in your head whether you like it or not, and these memories can also be retriggered by unexpected sights or occurrences in everyday life. When things like this occur I feel that it is the God-given power of forgiveness and future hope that allow us to overcome the negative power of those memories. To me this is the idea of hitting the sin/negativity head on with the power of God to overcome it. I am not saying that I have fully mastered this technique or that it is easy to do, but I do feel that it is the better solution to dealing with negative past memories.
All this being said, I am not advocating that we harp on old, bad memories, but we should not feel as though we have failed if we are not able to forget about them.
Temi,
Thanks for your comments.
It is important to recognize that I am using the term “forget” in a metaphorical sense. There are some things that we can never forgot in terms of the actual occurrence of them. What I mean by “forget” is to not punish the person who caused the pain. By constantly punishing the person we hurt ourselves as much as them by keeping the pain alive. The essential idea of forgiveness is not to punish the other person.
Hope this helps