There are consequences to our sin, and understanding those consequences help us to even understand the situation of the world that we find ourselves in today. The story of David shows us a microcosm, an example of the consequences of our sin as those consequences just continue to roll forward through the story of time.
First, following the sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and sending Uriah to his death, Nathan relays the words of God to David that his downfall will continue, even directly from within David’s own house:
This is what the LORD says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’
2 Samuel 12:11-12
God forgives David, but the consequences of his sin remain. David’s son, born to him from Bathsheba soon dies, but the calamity does not end there. Instead, Amnon, David’s first-born son and heir to the throne, rapes his half-sister Tamar shortly thereafter. David hesitates and doesn’t punish Amnon as the law called for him to do, so Absalom, another one of David’s sons and full sister to Tamar, takes vengeance upon Amnon based on David’s inaction, having Amnon struck down and killed by his servants in front of David’s other sons.
Absalom then flees to Geshur, in what is today the Golan Heights, for three years to escape his father’s justice. Yet David still continues in his inaction until Joab sends a woman to convince David to allow Absalom to return. But still, despite Absalom being back in Jerusalem, David will not allow him to come to him and be reconciled to him and this will soon allow the destructive cycle to continue as David’s family destroys itself from within from its very dysfunction caused as consequences of David’s sin.
David had previously acted as a man who had God’s own heart. As he grew into the king that God had planned for him to be, we previously saw wisdom. We saw bravery. We saw David have a desire to truly honor God and worship him before all of the people of Israel. David was a king but he was a king leading the Israelites under the authority of God.
But now, David has turned a corner and has become like every other king. His desire to rule and reign without regard and the fear of the Lord causes him instead to fall away from the Lord and his authority. David seems to revert to his desire to rule and reign based on his own rules, based on his own whims and desires, and that shift causes him to both directly sin with Bathsheba and Uriah as well as experience the downfall of his household as it begins to consume and destroy itself from within.
There are natural consequences to our sin that we must recognize and acknowledge. God is a gracious and merciful God, full of love for his people and patient so that we will come to him through Jesus.
However, at the same time, each action that we take has consequences, whether for us, for someone else, or for both. God gives us his Spirit so that we can act based on the best that he can give to us. Actions based on love, for him and for others. Actions that are joyful or that are peaceful. These are a few of the fruits of the Spirit.
Yet when we sin, we walk outside of the best that God has for us. We fall short, yes for us, but also in our opportunity to glorify God, and so those actions will have consequences, both in the short term of time as well as over the longer period of our lives. The responsibility and the consequences for those actions, despite the mercy and grace of God, still come upon us and can often also radiate out from us. Let us, therefore, walk by the Spirit of God, not walking away to choose for ourselves what is right or wrong, what is good or evil. Instead, let us look to him and what he has to say and to teach us as the consequences that are produced based on those actions will be both for our good as well as for God’s glory.
