“Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”
Romans 4:8 (NIV)
Paul has just shown us through Abraham that righteousness from God is credited by faith, apart from works. Now he points to David, who speaks of that same blessing. We know that David’s journey required much forgiveness, so we should trust his perspective. David calls the forgiven person blessed when transgressions are forgotten, sins are covered, and the Lord does not count sin against them. That is not a small blessing. It is the mercy of God.
Our works store up punishment, wrath, and consequences. Yet through faith, God credits us with the righteousness we could never earn, and he does not count against us the sin he has forgiven. We receive what we did not deserve, and we do not receive the payment our sin deserved. Christ lived the perfect life we could not, yet he bore the punishment for our sin.
How is this possible? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 that God reconciles us to himself through Christ, not counting our sins against us. God made Jesus, who had not sinned, to be sin for us, so that in Christ we could become the righteousness of God. Christ took the payment for all our sin, past, present, and future, when he died on the cross. This is the beautiful exchange. This is the gospel.
I wonder if we really grasp this mercy. God does not credit our sin against us; through faith in Jesus, he credits righteousness to us. This is a blessedness that even David spoke of in the Psalms. Let’s live like people who have received what we did not deserve. Put your faith in Jesus and let this faith change how you live, speak, and act, so that you can also reconcile others to God by sharing this good news.