Rev. Don Campbell

THOUGHT FOR TODAY – I SAID, “I’M SORRY!”

We often hear people who have violated the law, their marriage vows, the rules of decency, God’s law, or the rules of their company—to name a few possibly violations—who when, “caught,” seem to believe that saying, “I’m sorry” should remove all consequences of their transgression and all things should be as they were before the transgression occurred.

As the example of David and Bathsheba shows, God will forgive, but that does not mean that he will give us a crop failure: God spoke to David through the prophet Nathan: “Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun” (2 Sam 12:9-11).

David was convicted in his heart and said, “I have sinned against the Lord” (v.13). Nathan said that God had taken away David’s sin, but that did not mean that he would take away the consequences.

Sorrow is the starting point, but not sorrow that our own actions put us between the proverbial rock and a hard place. We are sorry that we have sinned against a holy God first and foremost, as well as against another person. All sin is against God and regardless of whether or not others hold us accountable, God will: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal 6:7-8).