In this age of the therapeutic gospel, we see many Christians embracing notions unheard of by saints of the past. Among these is the idea that memories of past sins are harmful, that we need to forget them and move on. We even hear the absurd admonition to forgive ourselves.
While it is certainly true that we ought not wallow in our past, that we do need to “move on,” the idea of forgetting is quite new and unbiblical. Consider the advice given by Jonathan Edwards to one Deborah Hathaway, a recent convert who had written him for advice on living the Christian life:
Though God has forgiven and forgotten your past sins, yet do not forget them yourself: often remember, what a wretched bond-slave you were in the land of Egypt. Often bring to mind your particular act of sin before conversion, as the blessed apostle Paul is often mentioning his old blaspheming, persecuting spirit, and his injuriousness to the renewed, humbling his heart, and acknowledging that he was “the least of the apostles,” and not worthy “to be called an apostle,” and the “least of all saints,” and the “chief of sinners.” And be often confessing your old sins to God, and let that text be often in your mind, “That thou mayest remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 16:63). —Jonathan Edwards, A Sweet Flame: Piety in the Letters of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin (Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), 43.
Here’s a good follow-up to the previously-posted advice of Jonathan Edwards to Deborah Hathaway, this from the same letter:
Be always greatly abased for your remaining sin and never think that you lie low enough for it. But yet be not discouraged or disheartened over it, for, though we are exceedingly sinful, yet, “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous,” the preciousness of whose blood, the merit of whose righteousness, and the greatness of whose love and faithfulness, infinitely overtop the highest mountain of our sins. —Jonathan Edwards, A Sweet Flame: Piety in the Letters of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin (Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), 44.
