Being forgiven of our sins means having our sins forgotten by God in His new covenant. Hebrews 8:10a says, “This is the covenant which I will covenant with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord.” Then in verses 10 and 11 three crucial aspects of the new covenant are mentioned: the imparting of the law of life, the blessing of having God and of being His people, and the inward ability of knowing the Lord. Then verse 12 goes on to say, “For I will be propitious to their unrighteousnesses, and their sins I will by no means remember anymore.” Hence, the last of the contents of the new covenant is propitiation for our unrighteousnesses and forgiveness of our sins. To be propitious is to make propitiation for our sins. Christ made propitiation for our sins to appease God’s righteousness, to reconcile us by satisfying the demand of God’s righteousness. Based on this propitiation, God forgives our sins and even forgets them. In verse 12 we are told by the Lord, “Their sins I will by no means remember anymore.” Here we see that God forgets our sins. To forgive means to forget, for the forgetting of sins is the real forgiveness of sins. Without forgetting, forgiveness is not real. God not only forgives us our sins but also forgets our sins.
For God to forget our sins means that He regards us as never having sinned. Therefore, to forgive sins means to forget them, to think of them as never having existed. Not only has God put our sins away, but they have even vanished from His memory. In eternity the Father will be able to declare that He has many sons who have never sinned, for in His memory there is no such thing as sin. God has this kind of forgetting.
In the new covenant the primary blessing is the imparting of the divine life, which brings in the inner law of life, the blessing of having God and of being His people, and the inward ability of knowing the Lord. For God to do this. He had to be propitious to our unrighteousnesses and forget our sins. The propitiation for our unrighteousnesses and the forgetting of our sins give Him the ground to impart His life into us. This is proved by the word “for” in Hebrews 8:12. He imparts life to us, for He is propitious to our unrighteousnesses and forgets our sins.
God’s original intention for His eternal purpose was to impart His life into man, but sin came in to frustrate this. In order to carry out His original intention, God made propitiation through Christ for our sins and granted us the forgiveness of sins so that He might impart the divine life into us for the fulfillment of His purpose. Therefore, in the new covenant life with its riches has been brought in, and our sins have been forgotten by God.
We have been forgiven through the blood of the new covenant poured out by Christ for many (Matt. 26:28). God’s forgiveness must have a proper ground. Otherwise, He would be careless in forgiving people’s sins. God does not forgive in such a way. On the contrary, God is righteous, and He does not forgive sins without a proper ground. The ground on which He forgives sins is the blood shed by Christ on the cross. For this reason, we must believe in the redeeming Christ. Because we believe in Him, God has the ground righteously to forgive us.
Matthew 26:28 says, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.” The Lord’s blood redeemed us from our fallen condition back to God and to His full blessing. The Lord’s blood was required by God’s righteousness for the forgiveness of our sins. Hebrews 9:22 says, “Without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” The shedding of Jesus’ blood signifies His death for us. The meaning of His shed blood is that God’s righteous requirement is satisfied. Thus, the effect of His blood being shed is that our sins are forgiven. Without the shed blood of Jesus, God’s righteous requirement could never have been satisfied, and man’s sins could never have been forgiven. But the shed blood of Jesus has satisfied God’s righteous requirement so that man’s sins can be forgiven.
Without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. Without forgiveness of sin there is no way to fulfill the requirement of God’s righteousness that the new covenant may be enacted. But Christ’s blood has been shed for the forgiveness of sin, and the new covenant has been enacted with His blood (Matt. 26:28).
Some manuscripts insert the word “new” before the word “covenant” in Matthew 26:28. The Lord’s blood, having satisfied God’s righteousness, enacted the new covenant. In this new covenant God gives us forgiveness, life, salvation, and all spiritual, heavenly, and divine blessings. When this new covenant is given to us, it is a cup (Luke 22:20), a portion for us. The Lord shed the blood, God established the covenant, and we enjoy the cup, in which God and all that is of Him are our portion. The blood is the price Christ paid for us, the covenant is the title deed God made to us, and the cup is the portion we receive from God.