Embracing Faith: The Balance of Forgetting and Remembering

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Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own as if I've already arrived and don't need to do any self-denial or straining or pursuing of holiness or growth in faith, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on. [00:48:66]

Remember his command: remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh were separated from Christ, remember that you were alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel, remember that you were strangers to the covenants of promise, remember that you had no hope and without God in the world. [01:14:84]

Therefore, if you forget that you were once in this condition, separated from Christ, alienated from the Commonwealth, strangers to the covenants, having no hope, if you forget that, you will begin to think that you haven't been forgiven very much and therefore you will love little. [04:74:37]

If your mind is turning back to the world, remember Jesus said in Luke 17, remember Lot's wife because she looked back, she had a memory of Sodom and she hankered for it and she turned into a pillar of salt, and so there is a memory that can lure us back out of the path of obedience. [06:79:24]

The picture I have in my mind here is I remember the 1989 finish of the Tour de France, the bicycle race in France, and Greg LeMond was fifty seconds behind and there was one more leg and the leg was a Time Trial with twenty-four kilometres and he was being beaten by a Frenchman Faneuil. [07:43:82]

I said last time I think that one of the things Paul forgets is all of these works of the flesh that he used to boast in: circumstance on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church. [09:33:28]

Forget everything that hinders your faith and obedience, so if there's something positive that starts to lure you away to rest in or something negative that dogs you with guilt, get it out of your hand. Paul says forget it and remember everything for everything you can, everything that serves faith and obedience. [10:21:74]

If a memory of what you were saved from fills you with joy and thankfulness or if a memory of some triumph of grace humbles you and makes you more thankful and more hopeful and more confident, remember it. So those are the two criteria I would use to say when this forgetting here is appropriate. [11:63:58]

There are passages in Paul where remembering is important. For example, here in Ephesians 2:11, therefore remember his command: remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh were separated from Christ, remember that you were alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel, remember that you were strangers to the covenants of promise. [01:02:35]

Jesus was visiting the house of a Pharisee who didn't give him any blessings at all and this woman off the street was washing his feet with her hair and the Pharisee was indignant and Jesus said a little parable: a certain moneylender had two debtors, one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty. [03:10:65]

He canceled the debt of both. Now, which of them will love him more? And Simon the Pharisee said, well, the one I suppose for whom he canceled the larger debt. And Jesus said to him, you've judged rightly, and then he comes to the end of the story and he says, but he who is forgiven little loves little. [03:43:47]

Remember the blood, remember the glorious event of grace that broke into your life. So clearly remembering past miseries and past blessings, right? These are miserable conditions: separated from Christ, alienated from the Commonwealth, strangers to the covenants, no hope without God. Remember the misery and you were brought near. [02:61:51]

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