At this point we need to read verses 15 through 17. “And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after having said, This is the covenant which I will covenant with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their hearts and upon their minds I will inscribe them; Then He says, And their sins and their lawlessnesses I will by no means remember anymore.” In this section of the Word, the writer was trying his best to prove to the Hebrew believers that there was no longer any need of offering the sacrifice for sin, because Christ had accomplished the putting away of sins. The problem of sin has been solved. Now he stresses this fact by pointing out that in Jeremiah 31:33 and 34, which he had quoted in chapter eight for the inward law of life, the Holy Spirit also testifies to this effect. In Jeremiah 31:33 and 34, after the Holy Spirit said that God would put His laws upon our hearts, He then said that God would not remember our sins any more. This proves that the Holy Spirit testifies that our sins have been taken away and that the problem of sin has been solved. Not only in Isaiah 53:6, 11, and 12 was there the prediction that Christ would bear our sins, but also in Jeremiah 31 there was the testimony of the Holy Spirit that our sins would be taken away and that God would no longer have any remembrance of them.
According to our natural understanding of the new covenant, the forgiveness of sins is the first item. However, it is the last item, even a supplementary one. The new covenant is mainly concerned with three things: with the law of life which is written into our being; with God being God to us and us being a people to Him; and with the inner ability of knowing God. These three things are eternal. But some brothers and sisters, still remembering their sins, may ask, “What about our sins?” They need a supplement telling them to be at peace about their sins, for God will not remember them any longer, because they all have been taken away by the sacrifice of Christ. Here, in chapter ten, after repeating the main item of the new covenant, the inward law of life, mentioned in chapter eight, the Spirit says that the Lord will by no means remember our sins and lawlessnesses. Since the Lord will by no means remember our sins any more, we should not remember them either. But it is difficult for us to forget our sins. Although God forgives and forgets our sins, and although we may realize that our sins have been forgiven, we cannot forget them. The remembrance of our sins is still subconsciously deep in our being.
What does it mean to forget our sins? It is to consider ourselves as never having sinned. Since believing in the Lord Jesus, have you ever considered yourself to be so sinless? God does. When we go to Him, saying, “Father, I wish to repent of my sins,” He may say, “What are you talking about? Are you not one of My children? None of My children has ever sinned.” To forgive sins means to forget them, to think of them as never having existed. Not only does God forgive our sins; He no longer remembers them. Not only in His administration are our sins put away, but they even have vanished from His memory. In eternity the Father will say, “I have many sons who have never sinned. In My divine memory there is no such thing as sin.” Only God has this kind of forgetfulness. The more we try to forget our sins, the more we recall them. You may still remember the day you stole money from your father. While we still remember it, if we go to our Father about it, we shall discover that He has forgotten it. Hallelujah! Have you ever realized that we all have a share in such a wonderful forgiveness? How marvelous it is! Yet this is just a supplement to the three main items of the new covenant, the most important of which is the law of life. God is our God, and we, His people, have the inner ability to know Him. From now on, we should forget sin and not talk about it. Any local church which still talks about sin is not up-to-date. We must not be a sin-talking church but a life-law-talking church. Sin is history and life is here. We now have the law of life within us.
Since Christ has accomplished the sacrifice for sin and has terminated it, there is no longer any offering for sin (v. 18). This does not mean, as some Christians misinterpret this verse, that if we sin after being saved, there is no longer any offering for our sin and that we will not be forgiven anymore. It means that since Christ has accomplished the offering for sin once for all and has terminated it, there is no longer the need to offer any sacrifice for sin. This was a strong word to the early Hebrew Christians who were considering going back to their old custom of offering the sacrifice for sin. They should have known that the offering for sin had been accomplished and terminated by Christ. Their need was not to go back to the shadow of the animal offerings, but to come forward to partake of the resurrected Christ and enjoy all He had accomplished for them through His offering of Himself to God.
Today we also need to see that our sins have been taken away by the death of Christ and that the problem of sin has been solved once for all. Since sin is over and has become a history, we no longer need to be bothered by it. Our attention must be turned from the Christ on the cross to the Christ in the heavens. We must enjoy the heavenly Christ as our life and all we need in following Him and running the heavenly race. When we enjoy the Christ who is in the heavens, we are truly under the new covenant participating in all the bequests of the new testament. This is the goal of this book.