James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
1 Chronicles 21:8
SIN AND PENITENCE
‘I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing.’
The life and experience of David are a mirror reflecting human nature and Christian feeling. If no man sinned more grievously, none repented more sincerely than he. The words he used when convinced of his error in numbering his subjects are a striking representation of the enormity of sin, and of the blessings of true repentance.
I. The occasion prompting to sin.—It is usually the love of self, whether in sensual gratification or in pride and vanity, which leads men astray from the paths of rectitude and religion. David was a great king, and in a self-confident and boastful spirit—a spirit of forgetfulness of God—took this course which proved so disastrous.
II. The nature of sin.—This is apparent in this narrative in its two elements. (1) Transgression of the Divine law. Men are under authority, moral government, and control; and sin consists in breaking through the restraints by which they are hedged in. (2) Disobedience to the Divine Lord is not an abstraction, but, as this passage so forcibly teaches, the utterance of an authoritative mind. ‘Against Thee have I sinned.’
III. The conscience of sin.—The king’s slumbering conscience awoke, and he became aware of the magnitude of the evil he had wrought. He felt (1) its enormity: he had sinned greatly; and (2) its folly: he had done unwisely. The way of obedience is the way of wisdom; and he who is alive to the nature of disobedience acknowledges and feels its foolishness and unreasonableness.
IV. The penitence which sin should occasion.—(1) True penitence takes the blame entirely where it lies, i.e., upon the sinner himself. (2) True penitence expresses itself in confession before God, Who has been wronged and offended.
V. The pardon which the sinner craves.—The expression of David is very significant: ‘Do away the iniquity of Thy servant.’ The contrite and repenting sinner, approaching God by the mediation of the Divinely appointed Saviour, asks that (1) the power, (2) the love, and (3) the punishment of sin may be done away. God’s forgiveness is as complete as man’s sin is heinous; and God’s reconciling mercy surpasses the vastness of human transgressions.
Illustrations
(1) ‘The grave sin of proud self-exaltation, which David and the people of Israel here had in common, presupposed the elevation to victory and power that God had bestowed by His gracious might, and its consequence was the judgment that revealed God’s anger against the perversion of His favours into plans of self-aggrandisement. God’s honour does not permit a king and people to seek their own honour in the power conferred by Him. The aims of God’s kingdom cannot, according to God’s laws of moral order, be abridged or obscured with impunity by the aims and purposes of human pride. God’s judgments fail not against false national honour and ambitious, self-seeking pride of rulers, as is shown by the history not only of Israel, but of all nations to the present time.’
(2) ‘David’s heart smote him, that is, his conscience chastised him. So he comes to know that he has sinned and how sorely, and to acknowledge the foolishness of his sin, and to pray for forgiveness. But to the inward voice of his smiting conscience is added the voice of the Word of God, which comes to him from without through the prophet Gad with the announcement of punitive righteousness. The penitence of the heart proves itself in humble submission to God’s punishing hand, whence David, instead of the asked-for pardon, takes without murmuring the announcement of punishment, and in the unconditional trustful self-abandonment to God’s mercy. Under the sorrowful experience of punishment the feeling of personal guilt is deepened, wherefore he acknowledges himself and his house alone to be the proper object of the Divine punitive justice. Having suffered himself to be led thus far on the path of penitence by God’s hand, he encounters the prophetically announced Divine mercy, which stops the punishment and gives proof of the renewed obedience rising from the depths of true penitence, in the deed (commanded by the Lord) of faith and devotion of his whole life to him.’