“I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins. Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it! Shout, you lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, you mountains…” (Isaiah 44: 22, 23)
When one of the greatest men of God who ever lived committed the sins of adultery and murder, filled with remorse and contrition (which means exceedingly sorry for sin), he prayed a great model prayer for forgiveness. If you have sinned and you don’t know how to confess your sin read Psalm 51. Make it your own prayer and you will do a great job of confessing your sin.
In the original Hebrew David actually asked God to un-sin his sin. Any devout believer who has really sinned will resonate with this prayer petition of David. The spirit of the prayer petition is: “Oh God! If You could only make it as if it had never happened!”
That introduces us to one of the most beautiful words in the Bible: “justified.” This word means “just as if I’d never sinned” and it means “to be declared righteous.” David uses this word in his prayer of repentance.
Sunday school children are taught a song that summarizes these Scripture verses: “God has blotted them out, I’m happy as I can be. God has blotted them out, I’ll turn to Isaiah and see. Chapter forty-four, twenty-two and three. He’s blotted them out and I can just shout! For that means me!”
They may be merely singing words when they’re children but when they grow up and become people who sin they may shout with tears when they read these verses and remember that song.
When you sin can you shout, “That means me?”
4SpiritualSecrets 
i realy love it because it is speaking in to my life
Dick,
I have a tough one for you.
As you pointed out, David committed terrible sins by having Bathsheba’s husband killed and taking her as his wife. Yes, he was confronted with his sins, he acknowledged them, he was remorseful, and he was eventually restored. Even though his sins were forgiven, he still bore consequences for his actions. In 2 Samuel 12, we are told that he lost his first son born from Bathsheba.
But what gets me is that it is not entirely clear how his repentance was achieved. First, David was allowed to keep Bathsheba as his wife. Furthermore, 2 Samuel 5:13 tells us that David had previously collected a whole set of concubines and wives. There is no indication that he gave up any of these wives up after “Bathsheba-Gate”. God then further blessed him with an heir to the Davidic throne through another son from Bathsheba, Solomon.
We know that the biblical principle of one man and one woman in covenantal bond for life is God’s standard for marriage. Surely, David knew this, right? But strangely, David’s polygamy is really not addressed in Scripture, and appears that he was even (at least partially) blessed through it.
We live in a day and age where there are serious challenges to the principle of Christian marriage in American society. I am thinking particularly about the seismic shift in our culture concerning same-sex unions. Though comparatively little is said about same-sex relations in Scripture, it seems clear to me that movements away from “one-man-one-woman-one-life” in the area of same-sex relations naturally opens up the door to establishing permissions for polygamist relations as well. As Islam is become an increasing presence in America, it seems to me that it is only a matter of time before polygamy will have the same status as same-sex unions are increasingly having today.
David was clearly “a man after God’s own heart”, and yet it appears as though his repentance did not require him to fully embrace God’s standard of biblical marriage as a practical matter. As more and more gay and lesbians couple together in our society, it forces the church to look at how we integrate gay and lesbians who desire to come to know the Lord into Christian community. Should we ask gay and lesbians who are in civil marriages to abandon their partners as part of their repentance, or do we accept the complexities of life as seen in David’s life and marital relations and make some allowance for something less than God’s ideal? In other words, would it be permitted for a gay or lesbian person who has contrition about their sins, just as David, to still be allowed to keep their same-sex partner, just as David was allowed keep his multiple different-sex partners, including Bathsheba?
That’s a tough one, isn’t it?
Blessings,
Clarke Morledge
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