Fellow-Redeemed in Christ Jesus,
When was the last time you accused someone, “What you are doing is a sin that displeases the Lord?” I don’t mean saying, “You should not have done that.” Or, maybe you asked someone else, likely the pastor, to go and do the accusing.
There are reasons we avoid such confrontation. We may not think it necessary. We fear a counter accusation of being judgmental. Our loving rebuke may cause a rift. Worst of all, we may approve of the sin.
It is through us that God Calls the Sinner to Repentance and to Life. God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his sins of covetous, murder and adultery. King David had been living in impenitence for about a year. Nathan brought David to realize his sins against God. God’s forgiveness of his sins delivered David from death.
Nathan means “gift of God.” Nathan truly was a gift of God to David. Any time I go in love and express concern for the spiritual welfare and eternal life of a fellow sinner, I am God’s gift to them. When someone rebukes me of sin or impenitence, he or she is my Nathan.
Nathan’s first responsibility as a prophet was to his God. Nathan spoke and acted always as Samuel recorded in chapter 7, “That night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying, ‘Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD says.” Nathan never represented himself to the king. We see that here as well, “The LORD sent Nathan to David.” Note from the use of the Tetragrammaton, the four capital letters which is God’s name of free and changeless grace, that Nathan represented the just God who also is the forgiving Savior.
Nathan loved and respected God’s chosen king. This was much as David had respected King Saul before him. But David’s office, even though it came from God, did not intimidate the prophet into inaction. The King was guilty of sins against God. He had coveted another man’s wife. He murdered Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, “with the sword of the Ammonites,” and took Uriah’s wife to be his own. The LORD sent Nathan with the purpose for David’s repentance.
Nathan held up the mirror of God’s law before David’s eyes. This mirror took the form of a parable although David did not know it was a parable at the time. A rich man stole the dear pet of a poor man. He slaughtered the ewe lamb for a meal. What abuse of wealth and power.
King David was incensed. He thought Nathan was telling him about one of his subjects. Being a just king, he would not tolerate such abuse. David took the rich man’s actions as a direct offense to his authority, and to God’s laws that were to curb such sinful behavior. We can almost hear David’s seething threat, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die.” There was no doubt in David’s mind that such sin earned the wages of death.
Nathan told David, “You are the man.” Even before the king could ask who the man was who did this, Nathan had revealed him in the mirror of the law. Nathan struck David’s hard heart. After a brief reminder to David about how he had wealth and power and had abused it, Nathan asked the searching question, “Why did you despise the Word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes?”
This accusation brought David to the sense of his sin and guilt. The point of the question was not the why; but that the action of sin is evil. Evil is despising God’s Word that reveals his holy will. It is not important that I know why I sin. I need contrition. Contrition is the recognition and admission that my sin has offended God’s holiness and brings me eternal damnation in hell. Contrition is my broken heart that I have offended my God.
David confessed his sin and acknowledged that it was sin against the LORD. For about a year those sins had been weighing heavily on his conscience. “Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD.” David took sole responsibility for transgressing God’s commandments. Nathan’s absolution of David’s sin was short and sweet.
God’s forgiveness delivered David from death. “You are not doing to die.” No doubt, the LORD meant more than “right now.” The forgiveness of our sins releases us from death as a punishment for sin.
David heard God promise him new life even as he would have to endure a lifetime of war with his enemies. David would experience sad days with the members of his own family. Yet David would continue to be the ancestor of the world’s Savior. That Savior would rule over a kingdom that has no end. He would rule in perfect justice and righteousness. It is the kingdom of Jesus Christ. His righteousness is ours through faith for new spiritual life.
Our forgiveness rests on the fact that God punished Jesus for our sins while he was on the cross and his soul was in hell. This happy circumstance between Nathan and David used to be part of our weekly liturgy. It was confession of our own happy circumstances with God through Jesus Christ. The pastor would say at the start of the service, “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.” The congregation would response, “And Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.”
Nathan did not list for David a series of acts of contrition he could do in order to prove he was sorry, or complete the forgiveness. I have prepared no such list for you. You know your sins against God and have confessed them. I absolved you of all your sins, even the ones you don’t know, by Christ’s authority as a called servant of the Word. It was short and sweet. Music to our ears and hearts as it was to David. Yet we too must live with the consequences of being sinners and living in a world cursed because of sin.
Nathan’s means of forgiveness was the Word of God. It was the Word of the coming Savior. It is the same means of grace the Holy Spirit applied to David’s heart that he applies to ours. Pastors speak this absolution in public worship. Individual Christians speak it when we daily forgive one another.
At eternity’s door, we will thank one another for caring enough to confront and forgive so that we will not die but live. Amen. <SDG>