Bible Commentaries

Isaiah 54:4

Shall I remember my sins in heaven?

I. There is a recollection inevitable. The identity of persons will involve an identity of consciousness. Abraham is in heaven, for example; and he feels to be the same individual that was called out of Ur and made father of the Jewish people—not a totally distinct being, but the same being. What are the recollections which are inevitable? (1) "I was a sinner." Can I remember that God loved the world and gave His Son, and that the blessed Jesus shed His blood for sin, and lose sight of the fact that I was cleansed from sin by that precious blood—that I was saved by the infinite mercy of God? (2) "I was such a one on earth." That recollection surely is inevitable. Take Abraham. His recollections cannot be merely, "I was a patriarch," but, "I was such a patriarch." (3) "I was restored to God by such means and under such influences." This will be another recollection.

II. There is a remembrance of sins impossible. (1) By-and-bye memory will not be the faculty chiefly exercised and put forth. In heaven there will be no sadness, no solitude, no fear, no carefulness. Memory, therefore, will not be goaded as memory is now. Memory will have an inferior place. (2) The ruling idea, recollection, will not be the sins, the many sins, but the forgiving of those sins—the blotting out of those transgressions, so that the painful remembrance of sin will then be impossible. (3) Nothing in God's conduct will put sin forward. He tells you that He has cast your transgressions into the depths of the sea. (4) Within yourself there will be complete and conscious holiness. Your character will then be without spot or blemish, and you will know it. (5) You may have had companions here in iniquity, but you will have no unsaved companions in sin with you there. (6) You will be employed by-and-bye. Your employment will be all-absorbing, and it will be constant. How can a man think and dwell intently, and with commanding recollections, on the guilt that God has blotted out in such a scene as this? Why did Christ die, but that sin might be forgotten? For what did the Holy Spirit work, but that God's law might be written on the mind, and that both God and the sinner might remember iniquities no more.

S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit, 2nd series, No. 6.

References: Isaiah 54:5.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 73, vol. xxiv., p. 42; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 170. Isaiah 54:6-13.—S. Cox, Expositions, 4th series, p. 44. Isaiah 54:7-9.—Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi, p. 253. Isaiah 54:7-10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii., No. 1306. Isaiah 54:10.—A. Maclaren, Old Testament Outlines, p. 225. Isaiah 54:11.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 352. Isaiah 54:11-13.—F. W. Farrar, The Fall of Man, p. 152. Isaiah 54:11-14.—J. Monro Gibson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv., p. 273. Isaiah 54:12.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 350. Isaiah 54:13.— M. Dix, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical, p. 169; J. J. Goadby, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 414; Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 37. Isaiah 54:17.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iv., p. 538; C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical, p. 401; T. R. Stevenson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 244; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 310.