Repentance

“But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done.’” – 2 Samuel 24:10

“Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” – Martin Luther, first of the Ninety-Five Theses

We hear about not just one, but two episodes of explicit sin in David’s life, and both times, his response is striking. After Nathan confronts him about the episode with Bathsheba, David’s first and only words are, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13). He says the same first three words to God after doing the census. He does not make excuses. He does not blame others, or the demands of leadership. He does not point to norms within the surrounding culture. He doesn’t use passive language, or reframe his sin in nicer terms. He sees his sin nearly exclusively in the vertical dimension.

Repentance can be self-centered or God-centered. Self-centered repentance happens when we are sorry for the sin because of its consequences to us. Our main aim is to avoid punishment, to keep God happy so he will continue to give us what we want. The repentance itself becomes a form of self-atonement; the self-oriented misery or self-flagellation we experience becomes a reason we deserve to be forgiven. This kind of repentance becomes harder and harder as we come to rely more and more upon our own moral goodness for salvation and change.

God-centered repentance is sorry for the sin because it displeases and dishonors God. Its aim is to avoid anything contrary to God’s heart, anything that would keep us from tapping fully into the joy of our union with Christ. The repentance itself becomes a form of grief: and like the promise “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” there is close on its heels an experience of grace, a feeling that forgiveness is not earned through our own suffering, but received through Christ’s suffering. This kind of repentance happens more and more in our lives, in an ongoing and dynamic cycle: the more we see our sins, the more we experience grace, and the more aware of that precious grace we are, the more we’re able to drop our denials and self-defenses to admit the true dimensions of our sin.

When it says “David’s heart struck him,” the verb used is nakah, meaning “to slay or kill.” This is no mild word. This is not intellectual regret, or a calculating correction. David felt slain by his own heart. He was completely smitten by the realization of his sin, and he doesn’t go speak to Joab or the people: he speaks to God, against whom only he has sinned (Psalm 51:4). We see this word again in verse 17, when the angel strikes the people as a consequence of sin, and David offers himself instead. God doesn’t take him up on that, but years later there is one man who is “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4) for his people. We also read on the same day these words from Peter: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus” (Acts 3:19-20). May we experience God-centered repentance that leads to true change and times of refreshing within God’s presence.