Our Unforgetful God

The Bible is full of admonitions to remember. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy (Exo. 20:8). This do ye ... in remembrance of me (1 Cor. 11:25). Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth (Eccl. 12:1). Remember the words of the Lord Jesus (Acts 20:35). We should remember the poor (Gal. 2:10). The apostles were always reminding the churches to remember what they had been taught.

We are called to remember because we are prone to forget. We know we forget. It is because I am forgetful that I am constantly worried others will forget. We tend to forget our obligations to others more particularly, and we tend to worry about others forgetting their obligations to us particularly.

The Lord knows this. He condescends to our weakness and he gives us reminders that he has committed himself to his people. This is why the Lord's Supper is a new "testament" in the blood of Christ. It calls us to remember that he is faithful. But the Lord is also careful to relieve our anxieties that he may forget. When the faithful responded to Malachi's call to repentance (Mal. 3:16,17), the Lord causes a book of remembrance to be written for him. Now this is certainly not literal. It is an image that recalls the regal chronicles of ancient kingdoms. It is an image that lets the faithful know that the Lord will not forget them. He is coming in judgment, but for them he will come to gather his treasure.

The rainbow is given with the same message (Gen. 9:12-17). It is a token of the Lord's covenant between him and the earth, that he will not destroy the earth by flood. It is a token for our good and for our use, yet he explicitly tells Noah that the rainbow would remind himself of his covenant. The Lord, of course, does not need reminding. But we need to know that he remembers, because we forget. So he reminds us that he remembers. This the Lord does as a kindness to us in our weakness.

Now if these things are so, we should not scoff at opportunities to be reminded. That is why the word of God was committed to writing, that we could be easily reminded. That is a major part of the preaching of the word: to remind us of what our Lord has done for us, his people (and that we need him because we are sinners, we must be reminded of that as well). These reminders are not given to bore us, to exasperate us, or to nag us. They are given because he loves us, as daily or weekly "I love you."