David once prayed, “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions” (Ps 25:7). We may not know what David’s particular sins were when he was young, but there can be no doubt that he did transgress God’s law. And that concerned him.
What was David asking the Lord to do? Clearly the God of infinite knowledge must retain in His boundless mind an awareness of everything that has ever happened. But David is asking God not to act on the basis of this knowledge, not only in his youth, but also in his more mature years. It is one of the many instances in Scripture of God being referred to in human terms. The picture is of someone remembering what he or she ought to do and then acting accordingly. So David is thinking of God acting on the basis of his sins – as if He had just remembered – and so punishing him.
In Psalm 10, when the writer describes the sins of the wicked, he not only refers to their outward transgressions but notes, among other things, that they “will not seek after God” (v 4). This refusal to acknowledge God – denying their duty to submit to Him and His commandments, and to seek His favour – was sin, and it lay behind all the other sins which they committed. Matthew Henry notes that “they live without prayer, and that is living without God”. The Psalmist goes on to state, “God is not in all his thoughts”, and Henry comments further: “They have many thoughts, many projects and devices, but no eye to God in any of them, no submission to His will nor aim at His glory”. If David was free from gross outward transgressions before, by grace, he took the Lord as his shepherd, he was not free from the kind of sins just described. The unconverted seek to be independent of God; they have no desire to think about Him, trust in Him and follow Him.
It should be clear that God knew everything that David had done; strictly speaking, He can never forget. Equally He knows everything that we have done, even the sins of our heart, which no one else can discern. We should be clear that “the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He pondereth all his goings” (Pr 5:21). Not only is He aware of everything we do, but He considers it and understands all its implications. In particular, He knows what our actions and thoughts imply about the state of our hearts. Matthew Henry warns, “He does not cast an eye upon men’s ways now and then, but they are always actually in His view and under His inspection”. Then Henry asks the reader if he dares “sin against God, in His sight, and do that wickedness under His eye” which he does not dare “do in the presence of a man like” himself.
But what would the Lord have done if He had remembered (in the sense in which the word is used in Psalm 25:7) such sins as David had committed? The Lord would justly have punished him, not only in this life, but throughout eternity. Because God has a perfect knowledge of everything we do in this world, the verdict to be delivered at the judgement seat on the last day will be the right one. In his vision of the Judgement Day, John “saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Rev 20:12). If, in this world, everything relevant to a particular trial had been written down in a set of books, with perfect accuracy, and if that evidence was read out at the trial, we could expect justice to be done. This is what is represented by the books in John’s vision: the evidence preserved in the perfect mind of God being used to convict the guilty and to acquit the innocent.
Also the punishment to which the ungodly are sentenced will be perfectly just. The solemn sentence will be: “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41). How seriously we should react to the condemnation that all our sins deserve! It was because David felt the awful nature of divine condemnation that he asked the question: “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Ps 130:3). If God would mark his sins, David knew, he would not be able to endure it even in this life, far less in the everlasting fire of a lost eternity. What a feeling of urgency we should have in asking, “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions”.
But how was it possible for God not to remember David sins? The answer lies in what David meant: he was asking God not to act against him because of his sins. Which leads us to a further question: How can God be just in passing by anyone’s transgressions? How can God be just when He justifies the ungodly – when He treats them, not only as if they had never sinned, but as if they had always kept His law perfectly – glorifying Him to the last degree in everything they had ever done?
The first point to notice is that those whom God justifies are those who believe in Jesus (see Rom 3:26). They have realised that they are unable to begin to remove the guilt of any of their sins; nothing they can do can give them any solid hope that God will cease to remember their sins. But they have found a totally-suitable substitute: Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God in their nature. He took the place of sinners as the Lamb of God, to be offered up as a sacrifice to satisfy God’s justice; indeed He was the priest who offered Himself up. He suffered particularly on the cross, until He could say, “It is finished”, and then He – the sinner’s substitute – died, “for the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).
So David’s prayer, that God would not remember his sins against him, was heard. When the Saviour came into the world, His Father was remembering David’s sins, and those of all His other chosen people. The time had come for the Father to act, by inflicting the punishment of that infinite weight of sin on His own Son, the sinless Substitute for sinners. Thus God could be just in forgiving all David’s transgressions, and just also in forgiving all the transgressions of everyone who believes in Jesus.
Hezekiah was another among that vast number who have benefited through God not remembering their sins. He acknowledged, “Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back” (Is 38:17). This illustration too points basically in the same direction: just as human beings cannot see what is behind their back; so God will not act against Hezekiah because of his sins. He will not remember these sins; He will not punish him because of these sins; they are all forgiven.
But if David prays that God would not act against him because of his sins, he also asks, “According to Thy mercy remember Thou me for Thy goodness’ sake, O Lord”. His desire is that God would act for him, for his good – no doubt especially for his spiritual good. We too must pray for forgiveness and ask to be turned from our own ways to serve the living God. We must do so on the basis of Christ’s finished work, remembering that He continues to act as Mediator – presenting the petitions of those on earth whom He represents in heaven, before the throne of God. Then we must go on to pray that God would continue to forgive us, enable us to grow in grace, keep us from evil and help us in all our responsibilities.
We should be conscious that we deserve nothing from God but condemnation because of our sins; but He is good; He is willing to bless the unworthy. This should be clear from the fact that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to suffer and die for unworthy sinners. Unworthy we will always be, but we are directed to receive the spiritual mercies that are so freely set before us in the Scriptures. And how thankful we should be if we have good reason to believe that God no longer remembers our sins but remembers us in all our varied needs, in His infinite goodness!