“David
said the Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord’.
Nathan said to David, ‘Now the Lord has
put away your sin; you shall not die’.”
~2 Samuel 12:13 (NRSV)
What seems to be a terrible set of
circumstances that King David found himself in, having committed adultery with
Bathsheba and having had her husband, Uriah, killed, is a critical biblical
lesson regarding humankind’s relationship at morality with God.
The Lord is a holy God, and, because we are made in the image of
God, we have been designed to obey the laws of the Lord. When we disobey, our consciences crucify us; unless
they’ve already been seared.
They who are seared-of-conscience
appear forever apart from God, yet only the Lord
knows whether that soul might be redeemed to the moral vanguard—and therefore be
on the road to salvation.
How God Brings The Best Out Of Our
Sullen Situations
What occurred within David as he
pondered the awful truth, having been exposed by the prophet Nathan, was a
symphony of surrender sung to the tune of Psalm 51. This Psalm was David’s
solemn prayer of confession and plea for forgiveness and restoration. And about
that time, too, he also authored Psalm 32—perhaps echoing the mood of someone
forgiven beyond their comprehension.
Given our obedience upon exposure,
and a David-like repentance, God will bring out the best within the sullen
situation.
This is not a negative-consequence-free
‘best’. There are still consequences to be endured, as David discovered with
the death of Bathsheba’s first child to him.
It seems an important lesson we
all learn; there’s only one way of recovering after a cover-up.
Recovering After A Cover-Up
There is perhaps not a human being
alive or dead, besides Jesus, of course, who has not attempted to cover-up their
sin as David did. It’s messy what happens to the mind in these situations, as
we well know.
We may delude the world, for a
time, but we’re not deluding ourselves, or, by the fact we’re so troubled, God.
We can feel God searching us, preoccupying us in many forms of guilt and
possibly shame, too. The Lord is
surely pushing us to own up.
We never like living in these
fearful situations, constantly worried about being found out.
There is beauty in a thing called
confession; having the courage to confess our sin.
In that is the path to
restoration.
The Experience Of Restoration
Restoration is the outcome of
reconciling the guilt of our sin.
Sin and restoration exist in
relationship by virtue of the fact that the transaction of restoration requires the payment of due remorse, utilising the
self-exposing currency of truth. Restoration cannot be bequeathed where there
isn’t both full disclosure and the full willingness of surrender regarding the
issue.
If we cannot give ourselves in
this way, we limit our experience of restoration. We limit the grace we
receive. God’s grace is ever abundant. But we can limit our experience of it.
When we give ourselves to God we experience true
forgiveness.
***
There’s only one way to deal with
sin. We confess it before others and, therefore, also God. When we own the
entirety of our sin, without protecting ourselves, we experience forgiveness
and restoration in full measure.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment