Sin's Forgiveness...and Consequences

“Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house…The Lord has taken away your sin.  You are not going to die.  But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt, the son born to you will die.” (2 Samuel 12:10, 13, 14.)

Sin’s wages are high. They are deadly. (Romans 6:23.)  “…when it is full-grown, (sin) gives birth to death.” (James 1:13-15.)  Nor is there any bargaining with the price that sin extorts for its fleeting pleasures.  King David learned this painful reality in the aftermath of his taking another man’s wife to bed with him.

David was a man after God’s own heart. (1 Samuel 13:14.)  But Satan gained entrance into, and control over, David’s heart through lust, greed, and power.  Does this sound familiar?  As a result, Bathsheba’s purity was stained, her husband, Uriah, was murdered at David’s order, and the king’s heart was hardened in denial for a year – while his enemies held God’s holy name in contempt.  During this time David’s heart was in agony from the guilt he would not acknowledge, nor confess.  Such is painfully described in a number of his psalms “of penitence”.  (E.g. Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143.)

After Bathsheba bears David’s “love child” (?), The Lord sends his prophet Nathan to confront David. (2 Samuel 12:1ff.)  Finally the king sees from God’s perspective, the evil he has done.  “Then David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord’”. (v. 13.)  There is no more denial.  There is no blaming of others.  There is no equivocation.  “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.  I s said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord’ – and you forgave the guilt of my sin.” (Psalm 32:5.)

God “forgave the guilt” of David’s sin.  Still, “the sword” of painful consequences never departed from David’s house.  His son dies.  A son rapes a daughter, and is killed by another son, who then seeks to assassinate David his father in an attempt to seize his throne.  That son dies, hanging from a tree, during battle. (2 Samuel 11-18.)

Sin’s guilt will destroy. Sin’s consequences will torture.  Only God, by the merit of his Son’s atoning death, can forgive the guilt, and add his mercy as we deal with the consequences.  This is a painful, but life-preserving, lesson.  David, having learned from his agonizing sins, offers God’s blessed assurance through the apostle Paul’s inspired commentary:

“Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.  However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.  David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:  ‘Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.’”(Romans 4:4-8.)

                And that is GOOD NEWS!

Ted Kell

Brownwood, Texas