Sin, Punishment, and Forgiveness

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This is Day 23 of my 40 day Lenten Blog.

After becoming king of Israel, David sent his armies to war against the Ammonites, but he stayed home in Jerusalem. One day he was walking on his roof and saw the beautiful wife of his friend Uriah bathing. Her name was Bathsheba and David desperately wanted her so he commanded Uriah to be sent to the front where he would be killed by the enemy. Once Uriah was dead, David married Bathsheba and they had a son.

But God was greatly displeased with David and sent the prophet Nathan to him. Nathan told him a story. "There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had lots of sheep and cattle but the poor man had only one little ewe lamb which he had raised and loved. He loved it so much he fed it from the table and let it drink from his cup. It was like a child to him. One day the rich man had a visitor and instead of slaying one of his own many animals to feed his guest, he killed the poor man's small lamb and fed to the traveler."

David was enraged at this injustice and shouted that the man who did this deserved to die. Nathan replied, "That man is you. The Lord says that He gave you everything-- money, wives, power, but you despised Him and did this heinous act of murdering your friend and taking his wife."

David immediately realized his sin and confessed it with a truly contrite heart. The Lord allowed him to live, but the son he bore with Bathsheba, did not. God took his life as punishment for David's sin. And when the boy died, David went into the house of the Lord and worshipped him.

God forgave David because David was truly contrite of heart and confessed his sin. We all sin, but God wants us to confess and repent of that sin. If we do, He will always forgive us. But that does not mean that the consequences of the sin don't still exist. If you break something that belongs to someone else you should replace it even if they forgive you. A criminal must still serve jail time even if the victim forgives him.

David's punishment was the loss of his son which some might think is unfair because it is the child that is punished. But who truly suffers? The child who goes to live with God and the angels never facing the pain and suffering of this world, or the mother and father who must watch their son die knowing it was their fault that he is dead?

God forgave David and gave him and Bathsheba a second son who would succeed his father on the throne to become the wisest of all the kings--a boy they named Solomon.

Next: Riding on a Donkey

R.C. VanLandingham is a Catholic homeschool dad just trying to make it through this life and into the next! He has written a Christian children's fantasy series about a boy named Peter Puckett!