93. Never Forget the Covenant
Deuteronomy 4:31 (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers, which he sware unto them.
Because the Lord your God is a merciful God, He will never forsake you, destroy you, nor forget the covenant. Mercy means He knows, He cares, He loves, He is kind, He is gracious, and He forgives. He swore a covenant promise on oath to our fathers in the faith, and so you can be absolutely certain He will keep covenant. God the Father has kept His promise in Christ, fulfilled the covenant, and gives us freely the blood of the covenant in His Holy Supper.
The Lord will not forsake, neglect, or abandon you. Abandonment by parents is every child’s greatest fear, and when those fears are allayed the child has the greatest security. When God made you His child He placed you in the most secure position of security possible. It is true that will and He must forsake all sin and evil, and He will always separate Himself from every sin. Holiness demands it. God, however, did forsake His own Son on the cross because at that moment He was bearing the sins of the world upon Himself, suffering and dying for our sins and thereby freeing us from all sin forever. Because of Christ the Father will never, ever forsake us.
The Lord will never destroy us or cause us to perish eternally. The holiness and justice of God burns into wrath against our sin causing death and destruction for the one who is bearing the sin. Not only must God separate Himself from Sin, but He must also destroy it, for sin cannot continue to exist in God’s presence. God destroyed sin in Christ, and most importantly, He destroyed Sin in us who believe in Jesus. We daily drown the Old Man in baptism and repentance. By destroying Sin in us He saved us, the person, made us holy and cannot destroy us.
The Lord will not forget the covenant. Wisdom is knowing what to remember and what to forget. God does the 100% right thing in regard to us saved sinners. He forgets every last sin of our whole life, and He remembers mercy toward us, the people who have the Life of God within. He remembers what Jesus does, not what we did. He sees Jesus and us combined in unity by the mystery of faith. We live by faith in the covenant promises granted through faith in Jesus.