2 Samuel 24:21-25
It is so easy to slip from trusting the grace of God back into trusting your own works. If you do not feed on His goodness and His finished work, you will find that your natural instinct of law and works will begin to surface again. This is because our first father, Adam, ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and we have been trying to do the good and shun the evil every since.
David was a man that thought forward toward the New Covenant. His prayer following the sin with Bathsheba is a New Covenant prayer, “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities…For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:9, 17). Each one of these requests cannot be accomplished under the Old Covenant but only under the New. He was looking forward to the cross and a man named Jesus.
This is why David wrote in Psalm 32:1, 2, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile”. Paul was so moved by this being a New Covenant passage that he quotes it in the middle of a sermon on justification by faith (Romans 4:5-8).
How could this man David, who obviously understands the righteousness that will come by faith in Jesus Christ, independent of works, ever return to a system of works for his redemption? When Chronicles retells the story of Israel, there is no mention of David’s sin with Bathsheba; the murder of Uriah; or the cover-up of these crimes. It should fall near the end of 1 Chronicles 20:1, but it is not there, as if it never happened. When we place faith in Christ’s finished work for our redemption, it is as if our sin never happened, and God does not record failures in heaven.
When that same book of Chronicles tells of David’s sin in numbering the people, it goes into even more vivid detail than the original telling of 2 Samuel because when David sinned that time he returned to the system of sacrifice with a little added twist. Aside from simply offering a sacrifice for his sin, he refuses any grace at all, as Araunah offers him his threshing floor for free. David refuses, saying that he will not offer “of that which cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). He wanted forgiveness which cost him nothing when he failed with Bathsheba, but not now? It is so easy to go back to our own performance for our righteousness and to feel like we must invest in it somehow.
Be careful of this in your own life. This will sneak up on you in various ways and will come out of nowhere. You can be trusting in God’s grace and mercy for all of your goodness and then you might slip and fall and before you realize it, you will be trying to “pay God back” with goodness and reading and praying and going to church. When this happens, the sense of guilt and condemnation will be thrust upon you, and sin is soon to follow all over again.
Calvary cost you nothing, so do not try to pay God back with good works. Let the Holy Spirit in you bring out good works through the finished work of the cross. Only the finished work works, so let it!
It is so easy to slip from trusting the grace of God back into trusting your own works. If you do not feed on His goodness and His finished work, you will find that your natural instinct of law and works will begin to surface again. This is because our first father, Adam, ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and we have been trying to do the good and shun the evil every since.
David was a man that thought forward toward the New Covenant. His prayer following the sin with Bathsheba is a New Covenant prayer, “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities…For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:9, 17). Each one of these requests cannot be accomplished under the Old Covenant but only under the New. He was looking forward to the cross and a man named Jesus.
This is why David wrote in Psalm 32:1, 2, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile”. Paul was so moved by this being a New Covenant passage that he quotes it in the middle of a sermon on justification by faith (Romans 4:5-8).
How could this man David, who obviously understands the righteousness that will come by faith in Jesus Christ, independent of works, ever return to a system of works for his redemption? When Chronicles retells the story of Israel, there is no mention of David’s sin with Bathsheba; the murder of Uriah; or the cover-up of these crimes. It should fall near the end of 1 Chronicles 20:1, but it is not there, as if it never happened. When we place faith in Christ’s finished work for our redemption, it is as if our sin never happened, and God does not record failures in heaven.
When that same book of Chronicles tells of David’s sin in numbering the people, it goes into even more vivid detail than the original telling of 2 Samuel because when David sinned that time he returned to the system of sacrifice with a little added twist. Aside from simply offering a sacrifice for his sin, he refuses any grace at all, as Araunah offers him his threshing floor for free. David refuses, saying that he will not offer “of that which cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). He wanted forgiveness which cost him nothing when he failed with Bathsheba, but not now? It is so easy to go back to our own performance for our righteousness and to feel like we must invest in it somehow.
Be careful of this in your own life. This will sneak up on you in various ways and will come out of nowhere. You can be trusting in God’s grace and mercy for all of your goodness and then you might slip and fall and before you realize it, you will be trying to “pay God back” with goodness and reading and praying and going to church. When this happens, the sense of guilt and condemnation will be thrust upon you, and sin is soon to follow all over again.
Calvary cost you nothing, so do not try to pay God back with good works. Let the Holy Spirit in you bring out good works through the finished work of the cross. Only the finished work works, so let it!
