As much as I love writing Biblical fiction, as I mentioned the other day, I am finding it is not without its difficulties and struggles. I never wanted to write about Job because I didn’t want to experience his trials. But David and his wives had plenty of trials of their own. I just didn’t realize how much they would affect me. Of course, I lived through some of those feelings with Michal and Abigail. But now, as I’m beginning Bathsheba, I’m encountering a whole new level of emotion. What was she like before she met David? What were her struggles? How did such a devastating sin affect them both? Just reading the Psalms gives us a clue. Living to please God and then failing, is often where the Psalmists found themselves. During their cries for forgiveness, for rescue, for mercy, they met God and found Him there.

Paul said it best in Romans 7:14-25

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

As I’ve struggled with this sin nature, this living of my own and my characters’ emotions, I remembered 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Have you ever thought why in relation to our sin God is called “faithful and just?” If He were just, which He is, He would have to punish us for every sin. It is what we deserve, after all. But He is also faithful to His own covenant, to His promises – the new covenant in Christ’s blood brought about by His death, burial, and resurrection, the promise to forgive those who trust in Him. And so His justice is satisfied by His faithfulness to the covenant. Only because of His faithfulness and justice can He forgive and cleanse us. We don’t deserve cleansing apart from Him.

Which is exactly what David felt when he cried for mercy after he sinned with Bathsheba. How often did he see Uriah’s bloody, broken body in his mind, knowing that he was the cause? What pictures couldn’t his mind erase of things he could never undo? I imagine the memories played over and over in his head, and the guilt, according to the Psalms, consumed him. So he confessed his sin and begged God for cleansing. And God, because of the covenants He had already made to Abraham and the future promise and covenants He would make in Christ, could in faithfulness and justice forgive.

As He can forgive us as well…