Year 4, Day 342: 1 Kings 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Forgiveness

• Forgiveness: Forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God.  We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway.  We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway.  As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others.  In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

I think that this is a neat passage with which we can have a discussion on forgiveness.  There is forgiveness all throughout this chapter.  And this is neat, because in each case the forgiveness doesn’t necessarily serve the one who is doing the forgiving.  In my experience with humanity, people in power tend to be forgiving most when it is to their own benefit to do so.  That’s not what we see happening here.

Let’s deal with the first one – the obvious one.  Adonijah sets himself up as king and then hears about David going through the process of making Solomon the legitimate king over God’s people.  He immediately repents.  He runs to the altar and grabs the horns of the altar.  He’s trying to save his life, for Solomon could legitimately have him executed for treason.  Solomon forgives.  Solomon allows Adonijah the opportunity to convince him that the coup is over and Adonijah accepts Solomon’s leadership.  We don’t know how Adonijah did it, but we know that Solomon allows Adonijah to go to his own house.  Solomon is forgiving and allows a rival to live.

The second story of forgiveness that we have is David and Joab.  Now, this one isn’t exactly spelled out in words.  But think about how many times Joab has countermanded one of David’s orders.  Joab killed Abner.  Joab killed Absalom.  Now Joab joins Adonijah’s coup.  Yet through all of this David allows Joab to remain the general over his army.  David understands forgiveness.  David understands that people make mistakes.  David seeks genuine repentance over perfection.

The third story of forgiveness is perhaps my favorite because it deals with God.  Remember how angry God was at David for the whole David and Bathsheba incident?  Yet, here we see God lifting up a legitimate child of that relationship as the next king of Israel.  God is willing to take a child of that union and place him among the long list of grandparents for His own Son.  God forgave David and Bathsheba because their repentance was genuine.

We are in a relationship with a forgiving God.  I can’t tell you how many times God has had to forgive me.  Yet, He continues to do so.  We are to model that forgiveness as we see constantly in David and we also see here in Solomon.  We are to be a people modeling what we receive from God.

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