Bible Tuesday - David Part 18

Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘ It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. I also gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these!  Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.  Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’  Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.

2 Samuel 12:7-11

Uh oh...

Then David said to Nathan, “ I have sinned against the Lord.”
2 Samuel 12:13

Pay attention here.  This is not just an "I got caught and I'm sorry" deal.  David is confessing and acknowledging that his sin was not against Uriah, or Bathsheba, or even to himself.  David knows his sin was against God.

But there is something even bigger going on here.  David is the King.  It's not much of a stretch to think that David could declare that He is the one who decides what sin actually is and is not.  People in power do that all the time.

But when you deny that something God has clearly labeled as sin is actually…you know...sin.  You have set yourself up as God.  You make the rules.  You define sin.  That’s the heart of the matter.  The difference between the ‘saved’ sinner and the ‘enemy of the most high God’  is not their behavior.  It is the belief that God is almighty.  That He alone has the authority to define sin.

My friend  and I get caught up in what she calls a ‘circle’.  It’s not an argument.  We both agree that we don’t have the answer.  Here’s the question.  What differentiates between the sin of the redeemed and the sin of the lost?  Clearly, we all sin…every dang day.  In that, Christians are no different than anyone else.  I’d like to say that a saved person would sin less and try harder to not repeat the same sin every stinkin day of their life but that’s just a hope and not something I actually have any evidence to support.  So for a while, my argument was simple.  Christians sin too but they feel bad about it whereas the ‘lost’ live their lives in continual sin that doesn’t bother them in the least.  For years, I thought that was a real good answer.  Now I think it sounds kinda dumb. 

It was David's reaction in this passage that changed my mind.  Now I think that the difference in the saved and lost sinner is the acknowledgement that God has the right to define sin in the first place.  If you hear phrases such as "How can it be sin if..."  or "Why would a loving God call (fill in the blank) sin?" or "That doesn't apply to us in this culture, generation, etc."  then I think there is a pretty good chance you are not dealing with a Christian sinner.  

And look, at the end of the day, all of us, (saved, lost, whatever) are lying around in a huge mud puddle.  But it's the responsibility of a Christian to acknowledge the mud even if everyone around us is pretending it's a spa treatment.