Divine Alzheimer's

I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. Isiaiah 43:25 NIV

Is it a sin to walk on your roof? Not if you're careful. Then is it a sin to look down from your roof? Not really. But what if your neighbour's wife is in her backyard taking a bath?

Therein lies the tragic downfall of King David, who got far too close and fell off the edge, not of his roof but of his soul. There's nothing wrong with a springtime stroll on top of your palace. After all, you are king. But when all that power goes to your head instead of your humility, and you insist on having your neighbour's wife, impregnating her, deceiving her guileless husband, having him killed and covering up the whole sordid affair from heaven and earth-you'll end up breaking all 10 of the commandments in a matter of hours! Guilty as sin.

It is to the king's credit, in this tale of such terrible moral deficits, that when the prophet Nathan blindsided him with a terrible self-incriminating parable and David realized the jig was up and that God knew all, he collapsed in remorseful tears before the prophet and God.

"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving kindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions....Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight - that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge" (Ps. 51:1-4).

And how does God respond to the prayer of the penitent? Decades later God rebuked another king with these startling words: "You have not been as My servant David, Who kept My commandment and who followed Me with all his heart, to do only what was right in My eyes" (1 Kings 14:8). Wait a minute, God - time out! Do you have Alzheimer's? What do You mean that David kept Your commandments, followed You with all his heart, and did only what was right? You must have the wrong David!

Ah, it is the truth of the everlasting gospel. "If you give yourself to [Christ], and accept Him as your Savior, then, sinful as your life may have been, for His sake you are accounted righteous. Christ's character stands in place of your character, and you are accepted before God just as if you had not sinned" (Steps to Christ, p.62). Good news for the chosen who fall, as did David, but who find, as did David, the God who remembers their sins no more.


The Chosen by Dwight Nelson