Short Answers: Does God Forget Sins He Has Forgiven?

This is the first of what I hope to be a series of articles that provide short answers to questions about the faith. In this article, I will briefly explain why the forgetting of sins does not remove the need for punishment.

The Question/Criticism

Some critics of the Catholic Church’s teaching on punishment for forgiven sins argue that God forgets sins the moment He forgives them. Based on numerous Bible verses that support their position, they mistakenly conclude that no punishment is due for forgiven sins. Let’s take a brief look at some of these verses.

Hebrews 8:12 (RSV-CE) states, “For I will be merciful towards their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (see also Hebrews 10:17). The prophet Isaiah wrote, “…for you have cast all my sins behind your back” (38:17). Isaiah 43:25, Psalm 103:12, Jeremiah 31:34, and Micah 7:19 use similar language.

The Short Answer

So, the critics correctly understand that God forgets the sins He has forgiven. However, their conclusion that God does not punish someone after He forgives them is erroneous. This is because God does not forget the consequences of our sins.

(Literally speaking, God does not forget anything. But we will set this fact aside with the understanding that we use this word in an equivocal sense here. It is as if He forgets.)

When we sin, we harm ourselves and society at large, and the consequences remain until one fully repairs the damage. However, when we contritely repent, God’s forgiveness puts us in a filial (Father/son, Father/daughter) relationship with Him (click here for more on this topic). The Catholic Dictionary states, “The Catholic Church believes that sins forgiven are actually removed from the soul (John 20) and not merely covered over by the merits of Christ.”

Additionally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1426, teaches,

…the new life received in Christian initiation has not abolished the frailty and weakness of human nature, nor the inclination to sin that tradition calls concupiscence, which remains in the baptized such that with the help of the grace of Christ they may prove themselves in the struggle of Christian life. This is the struggle of conversion directed toward holiness and eternal life to which the Lord never ceases to call us.

Hebrews 12:5-11 clearly indicates that justified sinners must undergo discipline (punishment directed at rehabilitation and holiness) following forgiveness. If the justified sinner refuses to accept God’s discipline, they make themselves “illegitimate and not His children.”

2 Samuel 12:1-23 gives us an example of God punishing someone for forgiven sins. Here, God punishes David for murdering Uriah and committing adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. Even though God “put away” David’s sin, He punishes David by killing the fruit of his sins, a punishment David chose the moment he chose to commit these heinous acts.

Finally, God does not remove the temporal punishments of Genesis 3 even after He justifies us and forgets our sins.

So, God’s forgiveness and grace remove eternal punishment, but temporal punishments continue after justification for the sake of healing and holiness.

Additional Reading

To read a detailed explanation about sin, guilt, forgiveness, and punishment, please click here.

To read an article about Purgatory, please click here.

If you have questions about a Catholic teaching, please visit Catholic Questions by clicking here.

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