The Danger of Unrepentant Sin, Part 2

The Danger of Unrepentant Sin, Part 2
Thursday, December 15, 2022 by Dr. James Walraven

Categories: Apologetics / Contemporary issues / Encouraging words / Hope in Christ / Scripture discussion / The church / Thought for Today

Will we repent of our sin or not? When God starts to, and then continues to convict us of our sin, how will we respond?

Much of 1 Samuel centers on the stories of Saul and David, and their interaction with each other. We find that while Saul starts well, he has a fatal flaw: fear. We see him repeatedly giving in to his fear. He fears the Philistines, offering a sacrifice that was not his to offer when the army starts leaving. We see him fearing the people, so much so that he disobeys God’s direct command to him. We then find him fearing David, seeking to kill him, murdering God’s priests as part of the process. At no time does he truly repent.

Finally, just prior to his death, he is so fearful of the upcoming battle with the Philistines, coupled with the fact God had left him—due to his ongoing disobedience—that he consults a medium. Even though he knows God’s direct command against doing so, out of fear he chooses to do it anyway.

As a result of his ongoing disobedience, his failure to repent, God tells him that his kingdom won’t endure, and later, that the kingdom will be torn from him and given to another. God leaves him; Saul is then tormented by the demonic. His failure to repent ends with his self-destruction.

Then there’s David. During that same time, David also gives in to fear: a fear for his life, a fear that Saul will kill him. First, we see him lying to the priests at Nob about what he is doing—a lie that leads to Saul’s killing of those priests (something he does admit after-the-fact).

Later, he becomes so afraid that he decides to escape to the Philistines. He spends over a year with Achish, lying to Achish about the life he’s living, killing anyone who would otherwise tell the truth to Achish. David is killing Israel’s enemies, in essence Philistine allies, not the Israelites and enemies of the Philistines as he keeps telling Achish. He even tells Achish he will fight against Israel with him, but the Philistine commanders forbid it. When he and his men returns to the city he had been living in—Ziklag—they find it burned to the ground. Have all their wives and children been killed? The men are so imbittered that they speak of stoning David, and at last, he repents and turns to God. God ends up rescuing him, and all their wives, children, and goods, are recovered.

What do we see? Both Saul and David were guilty of serious sin. David repented; Saul did not. We see them come to very different ends. We also notice that Saul and David had opposite views of God’s commands in the Law. All told, David loved it, Saul did not.

In the next post, we will begin to look at a couple recent examples how unrepentant sin can impact our view of Scripture.

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