How Could David Be a Man after God's Own Heart?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.

Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and Tom, How can the Bible be believed when it says that King David was a man after God’s heart? Wasn’t David an adulterer and a murderer? And didn’t he fake insanity and show biases toward his son Absalom?”

Tom: David had some problems, this guy’s got that part right.

Dave: Well, that’s a tough question Tom. It said he would fulfill all God’s will: “He’s a man after my own heart who shall fulfill all my will.” And David certainly fulfilled what God wanted him to do.

Now as far as being a man after God’s own heart, “There’s not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not,” scripture says. So what would make David that kind of a man? You know, Abraham also told some lies.

Tom: Moses had some problems.

Dave: Yeah. But David repented. When he was confronted with his sin by Nathan, for example, he repented. David submitted himself to God’s punishment, his justice. When—again he sinned when he counted Israel. We have a problem with counting, you know. We even have a little joke: “Well, evangelistically speaking,” means we exaggerate a bit: “How many came to Christ?”

“Well, evangelistically speaking…,’ you know. We do exaggerate our testimony sometimes. And for that, Ananias and Sapphira were killed. God took them. They probably gave more than anybody else [does] today. Maybe they only gave 70 or 80 percent of their money. Maybe they only gave 90 percent, but they said they gave 100 percent. So that was not allowed.

But David was a man with a tender heart, and he was a man who loved his enemies. In fact, he was accused of that. He was soft on his enemies, willing to forgive. He was very much like Christ in many ways, except that he was a sinner.

So yes, David committed adultery, he murdered—had Uriah murdered. They put him up in the front of the battle, and then they withdrew and left him to fight it out alone. Of course, he was killed. But David was still a man after God’s own heart because “What can any man do?” You know, David in one of his psalms said, “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits? I’ll take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.”

So David took the cup of salvation. He was willing to acknowledge his sin and to accept the salvation that God offered.

Tom: Dave, I think this is a wonderful lesson for us today. We can be like David in that way. Certainly, this is not opening the door to any kind of sin that we want to do and God is going to be forgiving. But I think to recognize that when we do sin that we can have, as David had, a heart for repentance. That’s a heart after God’s own heart.

Dave, there are some of our listeners who don’t know the Lord, and maybe they’re thinking their sins have…will keep them away from Him, and what they’ve done is too evil, too unspeakable, maybe. But that shouldn’t stop them from coming to the Lord.

Dave: No, it says, He paid the penalty for the sins of the world. That’ll even include Hitler’s sins. Amazing. It’s something that is forgotten in relation to Israel, Tom. People often say, “Well, those Jews don’t deserve to be over there. I mean look, they’re unbelievers! They rejected Christ!” Well does anyone deserve to be saved? You don’t deserve God’s grace and His mercy, and in fact, the Israelites were unbelieving rebels, idolaters, all the way through the wilderness. But God still brought them into the land because He made a promise.

And God is going to forgive us. It’s one of the hardest things, I guess, Tom, as you intimated, for people to realize, that it’s not on the basis of my good works: “Not according to our works he saves us, but according to his mercy.”

And if you think you have to dress yourself up and clean up and make yourself worthy of salvation, you will never do it. Because Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and it doesn’t say only sinners who have sinned this much, or only who are this bad. No, all sinners—all sin is forgiven because of the death of Christ. So we come to Christ not on the basis of our righteousness or our works but on the basis of His forgiveness.

Now that forgiveness is only possible because Christ paid the penalty. God himself could not forgive us if Christ had not paid the penalty. We need to recognize that as well. And this is the gospel:”That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; that he was buried and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures,” and if a person does not believe that, they’re not saved. If you think that you have somehow helped Christ out—His sacrifice was not enough—as you know, Tom, as a former Roman Catholic, this is what Catholicism teaches. It’s by the sacraments, by rituals, by your good deeds, and so forth, that somehow you’re going to make it. You even have to probably suffer in purgatory, in the flames of purgatory in partial payment for your sins…

Tom: Which is a rejection of what Christ did.

Dave: Absolutely, it’s a denial that Christ paid the full penalty. But Christ said, “It is finished!” And we’ve mentioned it many times, Tetelestai was the Greek word that he shouted in triumph. It meant “paid in full.” Without that, God himself cannot forgive us. Otherwise He would be partaking of our sins. He would be a partner in our sins. He would be condoning sin. If God forgave sinners without the penalty being paid, it would be like an unjust judge who flaunts the law, who flaunts his forgiveness in the face of the law, and lets the criminal go free. You can’t do that. Even God himself can’t.

So, for a person to come to Christ, they’ve got to recognize they’re sinners, that they are hopeless. There’s no way except that Christ paid the full penalty, and I hope that there are some who—out there listening—who maybe have never understood this and will accept salvation as a free gift from Christ.