Judgment & Forgiveness
9 Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. 11 Thus says the LORD: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. 12 For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun." 13a David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." (2 Samuel 11:9-12:13a)
We like to see judgment passed on others. Not only does it tend to make us feel better about ourselves, but since we most often imagine ourselves in the shoes of the victim, we appreciate when obvious consequences are faced. The fact that we get to see both God's judgment against David and David's confession and repentance may make it easier for us to move past David's moral failure to celebrate his forthcoming victories and mourn with him in his impending losses. We rarely get such a catharsis in our interactions with others. Most often others will never know how they've hurt us, and we'll never truly know the harm we have caused others. If there's no guilty verdict in a court room, we usually don't see direct ramifications faced by those who have perpetrated some wrong against us. Even more, we have to trust God's judgment when it doesn't look like the drastic outcome that
God pronounced for David.
While most people will never murder someone's husband to take their impregnated wife as their own, sin is sin -and all have sinned. All of us are deserving of God's judgment. But, thanks be to God, Jesus took God's judgment on himself so that we can be forgiven. How, then, can we justify holding anyone else's sin over them? How do we balance the judgment we want to see with the compassion and grace we want to experience? We can choose not to see others as evil - doing a bad thing doesn't equate to being a bad person. We can choose to trust God's judgment as surely as we count on God's mercy and forgiveness.
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:1-4, 9-12)
