The Selective Amnesia of God (How God “forgets” our sins)

Today’s write-up requires a bit more than casual reading, so go ahead, put on your doctor’s coat, adjust your imaginary glasses, and let’s examine a rather unusual case: selective amnesia.

Now don’t worry, we’re not diagnosing ourselves; we’re trying to make sense of what looks like intentional memory loss… on the part of God.

Which is interesting, because this is God, All-knowing, all-seeing, not exactly the forgetful type yet when you read some verses in the book of Isiah, Hebrews, Jeremiah, you begin to see stuff like 

“I will remember their sins no more.” Not overlook. Not ignore. Not postpone punishment, but Remember no more.

At face value, it almost feels like God has… selective amnesia.

Like He is deliberately choosing to forget certain moments in time specific events where our sins occurred. And if we’re being honest, that raises questions.

Because God forgetting anything sounds… suspicious, this is God, not someone who misplaced His keys.

So what exactly is going on here?

Let’s Start from the Beginning

“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God…”

Now this hits differently depending on who you ask.

Some people hear that and go: “Fair enough. I’ve made mistakes.”

Others hear it and respond like a lawyer ready to appeal a life sentence:

“Wait… I was born in sin?, In sin my mother conceived me?, So you’re telling me this is my default setting?”

And then comes the real pushback:

  • I didn’t ask for this nature.
  • Why should I fight what I was born into?
  • Nobody wins against nature.
  • If anything, Adam and Eve should be the ones dealing with this mess.

Let’s be honest… a lot of us have, at some point, mentally pointed fingers at Adam like:

“Sir… you had ONE job.”

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on perspective), we were all in Adam in seed form, in his loins, as Scripture puts it.

So yes, we inherited the consequence.

But here’s the part we must not miss:

God is just.

He doesn’t leave a problem without providing a solution.

The Antidote Enters the Story

Paul lays it out clearly:

“Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.”
— Romans 5:18 (NKJV)

If one man (Adam) could introduce sin into the system,
then one Man (Jesus Christ) could introduce the cure.

And that cure has a name:

Grace, Why Grace?

Growing up, many of us learned:

G.R.A.C.E = God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense

Nice acronym. Preaches well. Easy to remember. But to truly understand why grace exists, we have to go deeper into LOVE. Whether you’re a Bible scholar or not, most people understand love at some level.

And Peter gives us a powerful insight: 
“And above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins.” 
— 1 Peter 4:8 (NKJV)

Pause there.

Love covers sins.

Not excuses them.
Not celebrates them.
But covers them.

In one verse, Peter unintentionally (or very intentionally) summarizes the entire mission of Christ.

Because what did God do? “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

That’s not reactive love.
That’s proactive love.

So when we ask, Why Grace?

The answer is simple:

Grace is what love looks like when it decides to solve the sin problem once and for all.

It is God’s benevolence in action, His love, expressed as a solution.

So… What’s With the “Amnesia”?

Now it starts to make sense.

When God says He remembers our sins no more,
it’s not divine forgetfulness—it’s divine decision.

Because through grace:

  • Our sins are covered
  • Our records are cleared
  • Our identity is rewritten

So when God looks at us now, He’s not scanning for past errors like a disappointed auditor.

He sees something else entirely: The righteousness of God. Paul explains this beautifully in his letter to the Corinthians. So no, God didn’t suddenly lose His memory.

He simply chose to stop relating to you based on your past.

Now the Real Question: What Next After Grace?

This is where things usually go… sideways. Some people swing left: “Grace has covered everything? Amazing. Let’s sin freely.”

Others swing right: “Grace exists, but let’s live like it doesn’t—just in case.”

Both extremes miss the point.

Paul addresses this directly:

“Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?”
And his response?

“God forbid.”

Strong words. So what’s the balanced response?

Become a Student of Grace

Yes… a student.

Because grace is not just a gift it’s also a teacher.

Titus explains it perfectly:

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” — Titus 2

Did you catch that? Grace doesn’t just save. Grace teaches.

It teaches us:

  • What to let go of
  • How to live
  • Who we are becoming

And like every student, we won’t get it perfect immediately.

Students make mistakes, they miss steps, they sometimes fail tests, but they don’t drop out.

They learn. They adjust. They grow.

And That’s the Balance

Grace is not:

  • A license to remain in sin
  • Nor a burden to earn righteousness

It is both:

The gift that saves us  AND The teacher that trains us

So we don’t stay fallen, we grow.

My sincere desire for myself and for you is that we fully step into this reality. That daily, steadily, imperfectly but intentionally, we grow…

Until we come into:  “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”

Not just in the world to come. But here and now.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another Look at Time: A Navigating Cosmos Special

Image
  Another Look at Time A Navigating Cosmos Special I woke up this morning to pictures of my friends graduating from law school. We finished our BSC together 2 years ago and they proceeded to law school and are now officially lawyers. In my reality a lot has changed in the last 2 years. It reminds me of the saying, we overestimate what we can do in the short term  and underestimate what we can do in the long term, but not to stray from the meat of today's idea. I couldn’t help but marvel once again at the concept called time, what looks like simple routines of waking up and sleeping, compounds into unfathomable changes. Just recently I was troubleshooting the idea of teleportation in my head, especially with the understanding of existing examples from the Creator's Manual like Philip's encounter with the traveling Ethiopian eunuch etc. Super imposing that with what could be a physics implication, i.e, being able to tear open a hole in the space-time continuum, and access a ...
Read more

Ordinary Lives Don’t Bleed: What an extraordinary life will require in 2026

Image
Yesterday was disruptive in the best possible way. Not chaotic, not loud, just the kind of disruption that quietly rearranges you from the inside. In the middle of it all, one line kept echoing in my spirit, a line from the ruckus himself: Ordinary lives don’t bleed and that’s the point. ( Olakunle Soriyan 2025) It stayed with me longer than I expected, so today I am writing from there. There is something about a new year that shifts our psychology. A simple change in calendar nomenclature and suddenly hope feels lighter, courage feels closer, and possibility feels more accessible. We call it a reset. A chance to recalibrate, realign goals and plans, and frame the reality we desire for the next three hundred and sixty five days. Goals are written. Visions are cast. Intentions are declared. But what often goes unspoken is this. Most people plan for outcomes without planning for what those outcomes will demand of them. We focus on what we want to have while paying far less attention ...
Read more

Discernment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Image
  A meditation on what we risk losing in the very moment we gain everything There are moments in history that do not announce themselves. They do not arrive with trumpets or trembling earth. They slip in quietly, the way ink bleeds into water, until one morning you look up and realize that everything, all of it, is already colored by them. We are living inside such a moment now. Not merely an age of machines, an age where thought itself has been externalized. Where intelligence, once cultivated through years of solitude, failure, and the slow discipline of wrestling with hard things, now arrives obedient to the slightest prompt. Once upon a time, to think deeply was a practice. Now, to not think at all is a temptation. And so the most important question before us is not technological. It is far older, and it has stalked every civilization that ever mistook a tool for a truth. What becomes of a person when the labor of thinking is no longer required of them? I. The Gift That ...
Read more