David’s Description. Romans 4:6-8 Another witness to the blessing of being forgiven by grace through faith, with no works involved, is David. He was a man who experienced God's grace in dealings with him and testified to the great blessing of being justified apart from works. His history has great "highs" of victory when God used him and empowered him by the Holy Spirit to bless the nation of Israel. The works he accomplished were many and mighty. There were also great personal "lows" of the deepest and darkest kind that had to be faced. Did David's good works outweigh the sins of adultery, hypocrisy, deceit, and murder? David knew he was hopelessly lost apart from God's willingness to "justify him freely by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."
He knew the joy of forgiveness. Sinners who have repented of their sins are not charged with unrighteousness because God can justly forgive them when their sins are confessed to Him. We can, too, when we no longer deny our guilt and are willing to admit our sin. This happens when one repents to God, admits guilt to God, and accepts that "Christ was manifested to put away our sins by the sacrifice of Himself." This fact becomes real when we trust God does what He says when He justifies the ungodly.
Forgiveness of sins is not because we are innocent but because our Lord Jesus Christ has paid the price of sin. Pardoned people are blessed people. Pardon is granted because justice has been served and is satisfied. When iniquities are forgiven, this is more than just freeing the guilty one. The One who forgives reaches out the arms of acceptance, welcomes the sinner home, and places that one as a child in the family, in this case, the family of God. Sins confessed are sins forgiven. Oh, the blessedness of forgiveness and the blessedness of one who has been forgiven.
The covering of his sins by the sacrifice of animals removed from sight the sins that David was so conscious of. They were out of God's sight in mercy until Christ came and put them away forever. He knew the blessing, the cause for great relief, was his because of the blood of the atoning sacrifice. How much more do we have because the Lamb of God has come and borne away the sin of the world. The blood of His cross has taken away our sins. We can rejoice at the blessedness of sins having been taken away once and for all, removed as far as the East is from the West. They are covered by seven miles of deep water in "the depths of the sea" and are "remembered no more forever."
More than being forgiven and having our sins put away is the great blessing that God will not bring up our sins again. Other believers besides me have sinned deeply, have been forgiven, have had their sins put away, and their sins have not been accounted against them. This does not mean there are no consequences for sins committed by believers, but they are not counted against their standing in Christ. He has been counted justified in Christ.
People in the world often point to David's sin in taking Bathsheba and charge God with being unfair and inconsistent. The people of the world do not like grace. They don't find a lot of difficulty in David taking another man's wife because many in the world do this. But because a believer does that and God does not reckon that sin is damning him, and for God to forgive a person like David freely makes them angry against a God of grace. The self-righteous, sin-practicing, blind, unrepentant world does not like this at all. They judge their neighbors and reject grace because it shows the deep-seated evil of their own hearts. They think God should judge a person only by their works. For David to be a man after God's heart defies the law-keeper’s opinions. Whenever a forgiven, accepted-in-Christ, God-justified person lives in the world, he or she can expect a certain resentment and even opposition to that person being reckoned righteous by God's grace alone.