The Steadfast Love of God

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love..." - Ps 51:1

The first thing that David thought of God when he sinned with his adultery with Bathsheba and senseless murder of Uriah is the steadfast love of God. It is called 'hesed' in Hebrew and is found many times in the Old Testament that recounts the character of God. The idea connotes not only of God's immense love, but the loyalty and faithfulness of that love. God's love perseveres despite His children's repeated rebellion, and their moments of folly. God's love cannot run dry for His beloved children. This is great comfort. If you are a child of God, no amount of sin would cause God to stop showering his love for you. His love endures forever.

David knew he needed mercy. But thankfully his God is a merciful God. God's mercies are new every morning. I too have sinned like David. My sin may not be as spectacular as David's, and neither was my position as grand and significant as David's. I did not commit adultery and murder in the explicit and spectacular fashion that David did, but lust and murder is definitely in my heart in small measures. I am not, like David, a redemptive figure, an Israelite king, a vessel through which God blesses the world, a type of Christ. Yet if a man as important as David in the sight of God, committed sins as hideous as he did, could be forgiven by a merciful God, and be restored by Him, surely my sins can be forgiven and I can be renewed by the same God! By looking at David's example, one need not despair of his sins.

It is amazing how in many places Scripture describes David as an obedient and righteous man, as though the Bathsheba/Uriah episode never happened. It was as though God's Word was deliberately selective, or blind to David's hideous sins. It was the steadfast love of God that transformed David from a sinner to have the power to live obediently for God again. It was the steadfast love of God that allowed God to not remember David's sins, and not to hold it against him. It was the steadfast love of God, that ultimately He sent Christ, the son of David, to die so that you and me, filthy and rotten sinners, can stand before Him every day, righteous and perfect in his sight.

There is not one day that you can live outside of God's hesed, outside His amazing, loyal love for you. Thanks be to God!