Our forgetful God

I drove down to the shops for some last minute Christmas shopping today. The weather was dreadful, the traffic heavy and I had to take a detour. In an attempt to get back on the right road I took an unfamiliar turning and was surprised to recognise where I was.

Last summer I had a row with my wife and girls. Boiling with anger I went for a run and had taken the same route as I took this morning. I can remember being there, I can remember being very angry, almost the angriest I can ever remember being, but for the life of me I can't remember what I was angry about.*  What ever it was about, and it seemed important enough at the time, has long since been swallowed up in the deep, loving relationship I have with my wife; God's greatest gift to me after salvation.

I wonder if this is what it's like for God. Many Christians believe that, when God forgives our sins he also forgets them. The bible tells us that love doesn't keep a record of wrongs (1Corinthians 13:5) and, in Jeremiah, the Lord says,

 "For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:34). 

How an all knowing God might forget  anything is a mystery (presumably it is an act of his own will). I've always seen this forgetting by God in dry theological terms. How can God forget anything? Today I saw it in personal ones. Why would God want to remember the forgiven sins of those he loves?

*As I remember it, I was wholly in the right and everybody else wholly in the wrong, but my judgement on these things isn't perfect.

The full counsel of God

I‘ve come to feel that bad theology is unbalanced theology and that unbalanced theology is bad theology. Much of the challenge of practical theology is holding two or more apparently contradictory beliefs in dynamic tension; the true doctrine being the totality of both beliefs rather than the compromise between them. 

Let me give a non-controversial example. Christians believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human. These statements are apparently (though not actually) contradictory. The tendency when struggling with such seeming contradictions is to come down on the side of one half of the equation and minimise, if not ignore, the other. However both statements are true. Jesus is not less than fully divine (He's not half a God) and he's not less than fully human (If he was he could have been the sinless second Adam). To preach one and not the other is false doctrine.

None of this is controversial theology, at least among evangelicals. I'm using it to illustrate what I think is a more universal truth, that true doctrine is often the product of balancing two different (or even contradictory) beliefs, and biblical error, even heresy, almost always the consequence of getting this balance wrong. 

I've been reminded of this point this week. Yesterday I listened to a good Reformed sermon entitled The World is not our Place on the text; Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.  (Hebrews 13:13-14 NKJV)

The gist of the sermon was that we are not of this world because we follow Jesus and Jesus was not of this world; he was, and continues to be, rejected by it. The sermon refuted the idea that the role of Christians is to 'restore' society, arguing that in the face of sin, society won't be properly restored until after Jesus returns. The sermon didn't condemn Christian charity or compassion, indeed it argued that most public provision of health care, education and social care had roots in eighteenth and nineteenth century Christianity (and particularly evangelical or non-conformist Christianity at that), but it also argued the result of these good works wasn’t a restored ‘Godly’ society, built on Christian principles, but a society in many ways more godless than the one that had gone before. 

All of this I thoroughly agreed with. It leaves me deeply uncomfortable when churches put more emphasis on, say, the world’s ‘green’ agenda than preaching about sin, redemption and the shed blood of Jesus Christ. However I was still left feeling uncomfortable about the sermon. There seemed to be a missing 'application' in there somewhere. The sermon didn't give any practical examples of practical Christian compassion that were more recent than the nineteenth century and the emphasis of the sermon seemed to be on the need to withdraw from the world rather than engage with it.

What I wanted from the sermon was an application which helps me live in the world without being ruled by it. Reflecting on this, I was reminded that Jesus is, as always, our great teacher. If Jesus had been overly worried about being compromised by the world he would never have been born into it, and we would still be lost in our sins. The world rejects Jesus; Jesus doesn't reject it, and he doesn't turn his back on those that walk upon in.

So how did Jesus keep himself from being contaminated by the world? Firstly I think by always being clear that his relationship with the Father came first. This was reflected in his values and his habits. we can see in the teaching he gave his disciples about prioritising the seeking of the kingdom of God[i], we can see that in the forty days he spent in the wilderness[ii] and we can see it by the cross, where he was obedient to his Father, even to the point of death. His wasn't a spirit of fear; he trusted his father to keep him safe.

The life of Jesus wasn't a life rejecting the world. The shortest verse in the bible is Jesus wept[iii], when he wept for his dead friend Lazarus. Jesus compassion to those around him was real, and deep, and painful to him. He was a man of grief, acquainted with sorrow[iv], and I don't imagine it was the grief and sorrow of self-pity. He met and ate with sinners and reached out to them in love.

When asked what the greatest commandment was he replied, 

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind[v]….., and the second is like it; Love your neighbour as yourself[vi]"[vii]. 

We need to do both to be followers of Jesus.

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[i] Matthew 6:33

[ii] Matthew 4:1-11

[iii] John 11:35

[iv] Isaiah 53:3

[v] Deuteronomy 6:5

[vi] Leviticus 19:18

[vii] Matthew 22:37-39