WOULD GOD I HAD DIED FOR THEE!
2 Samuel 18:5-9; 2 Samuel 18:15; 2 Samuel 18:31-33.
When I was still on the threshold between boyhood and manhood, I wrote two books of poems. The first I entitled, 'Going our own way.' I did not think of it at the time, but perhaps I was using the royal prerogative to assert (like so many others) that I wanted to be King in my own life.
This seems to be the position that Absalom was in, in our Scripture passage today. Absalom may well have become king when the time was right; but he grew tired of waiting, and rebelled against his father the king. As well as the outworking of something which David himself had set in motion (2 Samuel 12:10), and the failure of David to discipline his boys (2 Samuel 13:21), there is the problem of Absalom’s own pride and ambition (2 Samuel 15:6).
It was the position of Adam in the garden, too. Man was the crown of God’s creation, yet man forfeited all his privileges by believing the lie of the devil (Genesis 3:5), and imagining that God was keeping back from him something that would be good for him. And, as the rhyming couplet goes, ‘in Adam’s fall we sinned all.’
The result for Absalom was disastrous (2 Samuel 18:6-8), and he lost his life (2 Samuel 18:15). David could hardly contain his grief (2 Samuel 18:33). Yet amid the cries of, “my son, my son, my son, my son, my son” we hear the astonishing statement, “would God I had died for thee!” However, it was not possible for David to die for Absalom.
For us, however, that is not the end of the story. There is a tension between justice and love which cannot be resolved without the Cross of Jesus. The fatherly tears of David the king demonstrate to us the compassion of God for His wayward children.
Only God can resolve that tension. He is ‘not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:9), and becomes ‘both just and the justifier’ of all that come to Him by Jesus (Romans 3:26).
Whilst it is true that ‘in Adam’s fall we sinned all', it is also certainly true that it was while we were ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ (Ephesians 2:1); ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8); ‘that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Father’s love (John 3:16) has found a ransom (Mark 10:45), and justice and love have met in the Cross of Calvary (cf. Psalm 85:10).
I wrote my second book of poems after I was converted, and entitled it, 'Going His way.' Mercifully, perhaps, neither of these two small volumes is still extant. Words would never suffice to tell what great and wonderful things God in Christ has done for His children!
