Remember Jesus Christ

As recipients of God’s saving mercy, remembering is both a privilege and a responsibility for Christians. Today, Sinclair Ferguson explains how remembrance is related to keeping Christ central in our thoughts and in our lives.

Yesterday on our podcast—and incidentally, if you’ve just recently joined us here, although we’re at the tail end of the year, you’re very welcome indeed—yesterday, we were reflecting on the practice the old spiritual masters recommended of keeping a note of the providences of God in our lives. And they meant it quite literally, to write it all down in a notebook so that you could remember and not forget, and it’s a very good discipline. And it wasn’t just good advice for Christians in the past. In essence, it’s a biblical directive, isn’t it? God’s people were told many times, “Remember,” or, “Don’t forget.” Positively, they were told to keep things in mind, and negatively, because of their tendencies—and let’s be honest, we all have them—they were told how prone they were to forget, and that’s why it was so important actively to remember.

Two passages come to mind. One is Deuteronomy 8. The first seven chapters of Deuteronomy contain Moses’ account of God’s redeeming grace to His people in the exodus and also the way of life to which God was calling them through His commandments. And then Moses drives things home by saying in verse 2 of chapter 8, “Remember,” and in verse 11, “Take care, lest you forget,” and then in verse 18, “You shall remember,” and then in verse 19, “And if you forget.” There’s a kind of rhythm here, isn’t there? The life of faith has this underlying rhythm. It’s the drumbeat to which the Christian marches: remember, don’t forget, remember, don’t forget.

And the same principle holds good not only in life in general but in our worship in particular. Psalm 103 underlines this:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits. (Ps. 103:2)

So, observing, understanding, appreciating, noting down, remembering, fixing in our minds and hearts the providences of God in our lives—all that is part and parcel of living well as a Christian believer. Remembering is our privilege, and it’s also our responsibility.

But how are we to do this? I think this is where we see the realism of the Scriptures. We’re God’s children, and sometimes we think we are older and more spiritually mature than we actually are. But what the Scriptures teach us, as Psalm 103 also says, is that God needs to remember our frame because we are dust. And to put it pointedly, He knows that we can be careless and forgetful and even cool-hearted children. Our minds easily wander to other things and we forget what God has done for us. And the result is this: when we should have greater confidence in the Lord, both because of His promises and because of the way He has providentially kept them to us, we forget. We become like people who lose their appetite, not realizing that they’re unwell, and then they wonder why they feel so weak and lacking in energy. It can be quite a challenge to take in just how forgetful we can actually be.

Think about it this way: imagine someone saying to you, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.” You might be inclined to say: “You don’t need to remind me of that. How could I possibly forget that?” But then, maybe, you actually remember. You remember these are among the last words the Apostle Paul wrote to his son in the faith Timothy. He wasn’t imagining Timothy didn’t know about the risen Christ, but he was hinting it’s very easy to be diverted.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to live without the gospel making a profound and constant impact on our mind, our will, our emotions, and then our whole life. And that’s true, isn’t it, because this kind of remembering isn’t just a matter of how good our memory is; it’s a matter of making the Lord Jesus Himself central in our thinking, and our feeling, and our willing, and our living.

So here’s a good watch word for us not only for the days between Christmas and New Year but for every day of our lives. We’re living between the past of Christ’s first coming and the future of His second coming, so don’t forget Him. Remember, remember, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.