On Forgetting God

KEY VERSES:

Now consider this, you who forget God,

Lest I tear you in pieces,

And there be none to deliver:

Whoever offers praise glorifies Me;

And to him who orders his conduct aright

I will show the salvation of God. (Psalm 50:22-23 NKJV)

  God will never forget us! As is written, “I shall never leave or forsake you” (1 Kings 8:57). On the other God does “forget” our sins as He will remember them no more (Heb 8:12). That is metaphoric; it obviously means that God will no longer hold sins against those who repent and are born again (his mercy).  In the key verse, it says “You who forget God.”

  People don’t “forget” God either, as He never forgets them. As long as we live, God will always remind people. That’s what The Law is for! A better transliteration from the Hebrew is “mislay” God. We think of mislaying as forgetting, but it is not that simple; it is “to put in an unremembered place,” or i.e., “to lose” (Merriam-Webster Dict.). That implies that the person once knew God and had a place for Him, but no longer loves or respects Him.

  At The Last Supper, Jesus said, “This do, in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). God can be lost! If Jesus has no place in our lives, whatever people had before can be lost. In other words, God’s sacrifice of His only begotten son must never be forgotten nor taken for granted. I believe that the Third Commandment addresses the issue of forgetting Jesus’s (God’s Name) purpose which was to die for mankind. The Jews continually misplaced God. Usually, God had no place in the lives of most of them. They never truly forgot what God had done for them, but failed to trust Him for ongoing deliverance.

  The same applies to modern-day Christians. People have five-minutes of contrition, know God, but misplace Him in their lives. Faith must be ongoing and endure to the end: “He that endureth to the end shall be saved” (Mat 10:22). The end is not to the end of the church service or until baptized; it is enduring until death.

  For those who lose (misplace) God, because God doesn’t lose anyone or anything, there is a penalty. He will tear those to pieces, and not deliver (save) them in the end. Some say that apostates never knew God in the first place. Scripture is at odds with that; they knew Him for a time, then misplaced God in their lives. What little faith they had waned until it was depleted. The penalty for that is destruction. Although God wants that “none should perish” (John 3:16), if they lose any remembrance of God in their lives, they will perish. Forgetting, losing, misplacing, and such translations means that those who once followed God knew Him before, but have put Him out of mind.

  How can Christians remember God? Of course, by taking the Lord’s Supper, but that alone is not enough! That requires worthiness (1 Cor 11:11). What makes one worthy to drink and eat the elements? Judas was not worthy, but he likely took Holy Communion although he certainly “misplaced” his faith in Jesus.

  Many question why Jesus selected Judas in the start. Judas knew Jesus and was willing to follow him, but somewhere along the line, he misplaced his faith. That may be why it is said, “For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10). Of course, Judas mislaid Jesus for real money, but a more concise definition in “avarice” (Strong’s Dictionary) – the love of the things of the world (Epicureanism of which Paul rebuked.)

  Then in the second verse, the psalmist indicated who is “worthy” with the words, “Whoever offers praise glorifies Me; And to him who orders his conduct aright.” There are two requirements  to be worthy: (1) Offering glorifying praise to God, and (2) Righteous living. The first is to diminish oneself and ones desires, and elevate God for who He Is! That is called “born again” and is the only “must be” (John 3:7) in the New Testament.

  The second thing to be worthy of salvation is living Christlike; that is righteousness. Christians will fail, but like the game of horseshoes, effort is rewarded. Those who have misplaced God in their lives make no effort to be righteous, possibly because they know they will fail, but certainly because they prefer the things of the world (avarice). Christians don’t lose their free will or misplace it. All sin is the willingness to prefer oneself over God. Too much of that attitude mislays the importance of God.

Then the psalm reads, “I will show you the salvation of God.” Being born again is seeing the light (John 3:21) which indicates that “born again” is an illumination of truth. It is not salvation, nor even really regeneration. It is the willingness to be like God, although “very good” cannot be achieved, as it was at the generation of mankind. With rebirth, God shows the new Christian salvation. They “shall be saved,” (Acts 2:21), but that is sometime subsequent to rebirth. “Shall” refers to the end of life wherein anyone shall either perish or delivered from perishing.

  Christians run the race, walk the path, and see the prize ahead (1 Cor 9:24). The prize of which the psalmist wrote was at the end of life. God shows the prize of salvation to those illuminated, but it is not immediately experienced! Because Christian see the prize as if it is at hand, they have the assurance of salvation, as long as they look at what God shows them. Like Paul indicated, Christians must look ahead to the prize. Not looking forward to what God shows, is forgetting what He showed at rebirth. As the psalmist wrote, that tearing apart is perishing. God wants that you not perish, but your part is looking ahead to the prize, and never looking back at the world as Lot’s wife did and perished.

  This commentary is Arminian Doctrine. I believe it is truth as tested by Holy Scripture. I wish that Calvinist Doctrine was the truth because it relieves the Christian of the responsibility of remembering God by glorifying Him and living rightly. That is not to say that most Calvinists do not do that, but believe it is not necessary to remember God in all things.

  Dietrich Bonnhoeffer coined the term, “cheap grace.” It seems that misplacing the Will of God is cheap grace. God’s Will is to be praised, and that you be righteous. Failure to do that takes Jesus’s death as trivial. To demonstrate true love for redemption, it is appropriate to glorify God and live according to His prescriptions.