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God’s disparate treatment of David vs. Saul

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 10:21 am
by darinhouston
Can anyone point me to treatment by Steve (or something else good) that deals with the relative treatment of Saul and David and why David’s personal sins including sexual and murderous acts were forgiven while Saul’s disobedience was treated so harshly? Something dealing with the oft-alleged arbitrary nature beyond simply “God is sovereign and can give Saul what he deserved while not giving David what he deserved if he wants to” (that’s how RC Sproul seems to deal with it).

Most discussions about Saul’s disobedience deal with the problem of God’s dealing with the Amelekites and not why Saul’s disobedience was so harshly dealt with compared with David.

Re: God’s disparate treatment of David vs. Saul

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 6:17 pm
by steve
I have no biblical information to answer this issue, other than the general principle that God deals with people according to justice. Both David and Saul expressed words generally sounding like repentance, but David's was accepted while Saul's was not. I have to assume that, in God's assessment, David's was sincere and that Saul's was not. As we know, David had a heart after God—so declared to be the case by God, and exhibited in David's general life and in the Psalms. Saul did not seem to have this same heart for the Lord. He was part of a religious nation, schooled in religious jargon and shallow piety, and, perhaps, did not ever personally rise above that level in his own piety.