Can God Truly Forget My Sins?: Christian Temporality and the Possibility of Repentance

Authors

James E. Faulconer

Keywords

Repentance, Christian Temporality, Change

Abstract

When we think about repentance, we face a conundrum. On one hand, we are promised new life. As Paul says, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). On the other hand, the repentant person remains the same person that he or she was. In the younger Alma’s case, he is the person who “had murdered many of [God’s] children, or rather led them away unto destruction” (Alma 36:14). How can Alma be both a new person and the person who led many to destruction? We are told that God will no longer remember our sins, as in passages such as Doctrine and Covenants 58:42 (“Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more”) and Jeremiah 31:34 (“I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more”). Such scriptures imply that God no longer remembers the previous Alma, but how is that possible? We often deal with this question by assuming that God’s forgetting should be understood metaphorically. After all, our all-knowing God cannot forget anything and still be all-knowing. Contrary to that usual assumption, I argue that God can, in fact, forget sin.

Recommended Citation

Faulconer, James E. (2024) "Can God Truly Forget My Sins?: Christian Temporality and the Possibility of Repentance," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol63/iss1/8