D&C 58: 42 - Forgive and Forget

D&C 58: 42 says, "Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more." But what does that mean, exactly? I understand the part about repentance and forgiveness, but what I don't understand is the part where the Lord said that He won't remember the sins that we've repented of. Could it be that He actually, literally, forgets them?

Part of me is thinking that that is completely ridiculous. For starters, He's pretty much omniscient. He knows everything, including all of the details surrounding every sin we've ever committed. It just doesn't make sense for an omniscient being to have fuzzy spots in His memory so that He literally doesn't remember the sins that He has forgiven. He must remember that they happened, so what does it mean that He will "remember them no more"?

I'm kind of guessing that it just means that those sins won't be counted against us - that they won't affect our spiritual permanent record. Sure, He'll remember that they happened, because He knows everything, but that doesn't mean He'll necessarily bring them up at Final Judgement. We repented, He forgave us, and that's really all that matters, so there's no reason to bring it back up. In that sense, He might as well have forgotten about them, because they're not going to come up again, but I still think that, somewhere in the back of His mind, He still remembers everything.

So, does Jesus remember repented-of sins or not? If we take His word literally, He must not. But how often does Jesus speak literally, anyway? He frequently teaches in parables and uses what we might call poetic language. He uses words more creatively than we do. Perhaps, when He says that He'll "remember [our sins] no more," it doesn't mean to Him what we think it literally means. It doesn't make sense for an omniscient being to literally forget anything, so what does it mean when He says that He won't remember them?

Once again, I really just kind of think that it just means that He won't bring it up again. Yeah, it happened, and He probably remembers that it happened, but it's been repented of, the debt has been paid for, it's all in the past, so there's no reason to bring it back up. There is, from that moment on, no real need to remember that sin, except to learn what you can from the experience. It doesn't need to stay on your permanent record or be brought up at final judgement. It may as well have not even happened, except that we hopefully have all learned something from it.

I haven't learned definitively whether Jesus literally forgets forgiven sins or not, but I think we've established that once a sin has been forgiven, the information concerning it is mostly no longer needed. If the information no longer matters, then I guess it really doesn't matter whether Jesus holds on to the information or not. Whether He actually forgets or not, what's important to remember is that He forgives.