“Justified” Never Sinned
“And if thou wilt walk before Me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep My statutes and My judgments: Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel.” I Kings 9:4-5
After King Solomon had completed the building of the temple and of his own residence, he prayed a rather lengthy prayer to the LORD as a prayer of dedication to God’s house. To summarize his prayer, He began by praising God as the sovereign, righteous, merciful, and mighty God of heaven and earth. He continued his prayer by asking that God would hear his prayer and the prayers of the people of Israel. He asked that God would condemn the wicked and justify the righteous. And of course, he asked that God would forgive their sins, forgiving each individual who confessed and turned from sin, because that’s what God does.
Since God knows each person’s thoughts, motives, and intentions, He can make the best choice for each person as to his or her reward or his or her punishment. Nothing is hidden from God. He knows whether we are sincerely repentant of our sin or whether we are only giving lip service, which is futile to received God’s attention. Would God have mercy on someone who had no intention of turning from sin? Would that person actually think that he could pretend to humbly submit and that God would grant him his desires? It is really a sobering thought to know that nothing that we do, say, or think is overlooked by the LORD God of heaven and earth.
While that last statement sounds rather ominous, it is also a sobering and a joyful thought to realize that when we sin and repent, God forgives us completely. This fact was made clear to me in this passage of the Old Testament. When God answered Solomon concerning the desires of Solomon’s heart, God made it clear that Solomon must walk before God, as his father David walked, with integrity and righteousness. I immediately thought of the fact that David had committed adultery with another man’s wife, Bathsheba, and then arranged for her husband, Uriah, to be killed in battle. How could David even be considered a righteous man after those horrible deeds that he had committed?
And then I remembered that David sincerely repented of his sin, and God completely, fully, and without “hesitation or reservation”, as one of my former pastors used to say, forgave him. When David sincerely repented of his sin, God “justified” him in His sight. Folks like to put it this way: “just as if I’d” never sinned. Those sins that David had committed were gone, never to be held against him again. That’s why God saw him as a “man after God’s own heart”, a man of integrity and righteousness. Upon repentance, God will “throw our sins in the sea of forgetfulness and put up a ‘no fishing’ sign!” That is an old cliché, but it is still just as true as it was for David. It is difficult to understand how God can be that merciful to us sinners, but how else could we ever be in right standing before Him? When we repent and place our faith in Jesus Christ, God can’t see our sin because it is covered by the shed blood of Christ, the only means whereby we can be justified, that is, declared “not guilty” before a holy and righteous God.