Psalms 51:14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

Forgiveness is a big deal; you can’t really have a true friendship without it. To be human is to fail. We make mistakes. We hurt one another. To forgive is to make a decision to cancel a debt that you are owed and not to hold it against your offender. I’m glad that when we offend God, He writes it in the sand where the winds of forgiveness can erase it. I learned a lot about that from David’s story. It gave me so much hope. If God could forgive and continue to be friends with David, then surely, He would forgive me for my past and for the things I do day after day that grieve His heart.

David was one of God’s unlikely leaders. He was the youngest and smallest of Jesse’s sons. When the prophet Samuel came to visit Jesse with a message that God had sent him to choose one of his sons and anoint him, the expectation was that it would surely be one of the tall, good-looking young men. But Samuel passed over all of them and set his eyes on David, the scrawny shepherd boy. David would make a name for himself when he killed the giant Goliath and went into battle victorious. He was God’s choice for king.

But a wandering eye proved to be a weakness for David. After he became king he decided to stay back home while his army was at battle. From the rooftop of the palace he saw the beautiful Bathsheba and sent for her. He spent the night with her, and later she sent word that she was pregnant. He schemed to cover up his sin by calling her husband, Uriah, back from the front lines, assuming he would be glad to spend the night with his wife so people would think the pregnancy was a result of their union. David’s plan was unsuccessful. The husband proved to be a much more honorable man than David was and did not take advantage of the chance to be with his wife while his fellow soldiers were away at war. So David sent him into a position in the battle where he was sure to be killed. And when he was, David took his wife, Bathsheba, as his own.

Henri Nouwen said this about forgiveness: “There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not been able fully to receive it. Only as people who have accepted forgiveness can we find the inner freedom to give it.”

Psalm 51

Psalm 51 records David’s brokenness over his sin. He was broken and contrite. He was crushed in his spirit to think that he had done something so vile against another human being. He had used his power to take advantage of another person; and he had compounded that sin by killing an innocent man. He understood that a sin against any person is a sin against God. Yet he was desperate to be right with God again. At the same time, he was humbled to think that he could ever be right again with a holy God because of the things he had done. This is the beauty of brokenness. It is a tool that God uses to draw us back to Himself.

David’s brokenness over his sin is a model for us. I’m afraid that we’ve lost a sense of shame and regret over our sin. We rarely even use the word “sin” anymore. We talk about making mistakes, coming up short, telling white lies. But God calls it all sin and it grieves His heart. While it does not change His unconditional love for us, it does disturb our fellowship and friendship. But when we acknowledge our sin and cry out to Him, He forgives. As Francis Chan puts it, that’s crazy love! He writes our sin in the sand where the winds of forgiveness can wash it away!

Those who have been forgiven much should be ready to give forgiveness freely.- John M. Perkins