When I first sat down to write on this subject, I was planning on opening with some short of shot at former MLB-er, Roger Clemens, and his famed usage of the word "misremembered."
The word was used when Clemens was on trial for performance enhancing drugs in front of Congress. In reference to the testimony of a former teammate, Andy Pettitte, Clemens claimed: "I believe Andy misremembered." The word was then thrown around by the press, making a mockery of Clements. The blogosphere exploded at the utterance and attempted to paint Clemens as a dumb, ignorant jock. Yet a quick search on the ol' internet machine brought new light to the subject.
Misremembered is actually a completely legitimate word. It means "To remember incorrectly" and was used by writers such as Thomas Jefferson, Jonathan Swift and others dating back to 1530. While many members of the media and fan base attempted to paint Clemens as ignorant, their efforts in fact had an obvious effect: Clemens was in the right and it was in fact the critics who were ignorant. Yet in the wake of the BALCO trial, Clemens is still painted as ignorant and thick headed and the critics still come out smelling like a rose. When we look back at the "misremembering (also a word) scandal" most of us have a tendency to..well...misremember.
As I was reading scripture the other day, I was hit by the fact that God commonly misremembers. For instance, in Genesis 12, we see the story of Abraham and his wife Sarah traveling to Egypt. Now Sarah was a babe. So much of a babe that Abraham (technically still Abram) was scared that the Egyptian king would try to take her as his own wife. Not wanting to be collateral damage to a very one sided love triangle (it wasn't uncommon for royalty to take women at the expense of their current husbands) Abram decided it was safer to say Sarah was his sister. Weird. Abraham was not man enough to defend his wife and eventually Pharaoh took Sarah (you can read the stunning plot twist in Gen 12:17). Not learning his lesson we see a similar story played out in Genesis 22 where Abraham and Sarah again take the same strategy with King Abimelech. Same story, same plot twist, same ending. Abraham had heard first hand of God's promises, assuring him of descendants who would outnumber the stars in the sky, and yet Abraham didn't trust God to take care of him and Sarah (who is pretty intricate to the whole descendant thing). Abraham took situations into his own hand, lied and made himself look foolish.
Yet I was struck by another scripture later in the OT. In Nehemiah nine a group of praying Levites say: "You are the Lord, the God, who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you..." (Neh 9:7-8). Is this the same Abraham? The Abraham who slept with another woman because he didn't trust that God would fulfill his promise(Gen 16:2-4)? The same Abraham who lied and offered up his wife to the kings of other nations? How did God get from unfaithful Abraham to finding that same heart faithful. God must have misremembered.
He doesn't see a weak and scared Abraham, or a flaky Job, he sees the perfection of his son covering their inadequacies. That's the difference of the cross.
I noticed another occurrence of this in James chapter five: "Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job..." (James 5:11 ESV). Job? A picture of steadfastness? We all know that Job eventually ended up there, but there were times when Job was the opposite of steadfast. In Job 16:9, Job lashes out at God, saying that God hates him despite the fact that "there is no violence in my hands." In other parts of the same chapter Job fantasizes about death (Job 16:13) and cries there is no hope (Job 16:15-16). These verses don't exactly paint job as the energizer bunny of steadfastness. Did James misremember when writing of Job?
Well, yes and no. No in the fact that God isn't making a mistake in remembering these men. But yes in the way that these men are being remembered by something they didn't perfectly embody. The truth is that's the beauty of the cross. Although both of these men lived before the cross, they were preemptively covered by the sanctifying blood of Christ. In second Corinthians Paul says that Jesus in the cross was "reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting us to the message of reconciliation" (2 Cor 5:19). When God looks back at Abraham and Job, he sees something different. Not because he misremembers, but because there is nothing to remember. He doesn't see a weak and scared Abraham, or a flaky Job, he sees the perfection of his son covering their inadequacies. That's the difference of the cross.
No matter what your past is, if you are a believer in Christ, God sees you as something all together different. Colossians 2:14 says that Jesus "canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he (Jesus) set aside, nailing it to the cross." This is the basis of our redemption groups at SHEC: whatever you think you are, in Christ you're something different, something pure. You are redeemed.
We would all be defined by the most horrible things that we have done if it were not for the cross. The cross is the great equalizer. It doesn't lower God's standards of perfection, it merely raises our standings into perfection. Does this mean that you cease sinning when you become a Christian? No. We will sin, we live in a sinful world with a sinful flesh. But we are no longer defined by that sin. We are defined by Christ. And that's a definition that I can give my life to.