Adultery and Murder.

Certain words in the Christian “language” have always bothered me because I felt I should use them, but had no concrete idea of what they meant. “Redemption” is an example. My mind had always roughly equated it with “salvation,” and I didn’t understand the need for both a Savior and a Redeemer. A few weeks ago I started digging around in Scripture to see what else besides salvation might be under the jurisdiction of a “redeemer.”

As it turns out, there once lived a handsome, heroic king who was everybody’s favorite. He was a warrior, a poet, and a musician—a Renaissance man to be sure. Having been anointed by God at a young age and close to God all his life, he was richly blessed with peerless military prowess, a number of gorgeous wives, endless cash flow, and the unshakeable protection of God. One day, after receiving news of another blowout victory, he sauntered up on the roof and looked with pride over his kingdom. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a woman more beautiful than his imagination could have produced. He turned to gaze on her more directly as she rinsed her hair. The water caught the sunlight, illumining her perfect figure with an amber glow. His body ached with desire, and, afraid to move, he whispered to his servant, “Who is this woman?” The latter followed the path of his vision and responded, “Oh, that’s Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife.” The name sounded magnificent as David turned it over on his tongue. Bathsheba. He knew it was fate and sent the servant to bring her to him.

It was every man’s dream followed by every man’s nightmare. The two spent a passionate evening together before David said, “You better get home.” Bathsheba regretfully acquiesced, and the two parted with wistful half-smiles and several lingering good-bye kisses. She was the subject of many a daydream of David’s, and he thought often and fondly of his one-time lover. But eight weeks or so later, his fleeting thoughts of the bathing beauty were halted: David was delivered an unsigned message that simply read, “I’m pregnant.” His heart thudded against his ribcage and he lie back on the bed, trying to figure out the best way to deal with his unwelcome surprise. Finally, he called for his servant and ordered, “Get Uriah out here.”

Uriah was a really good man, serious about both work and ethics. To begin their conversation, David praised this quality and then constructed the pretense of asking for battle news. Uriah gave him a quick rundown and David said, “You’ve obviously had a difficult stint out there; why don’t you go home to your wife and relax.” They shook hands and in no time, Uriah was on his way. But he didn’t go home. He slept outside the city walls with the guards since he knew his fellow soldiers were doing the same. David saw him the next morning and asked suspiciously, “I told you to go home. Why didn’t you?” Uriah explained his commitment to his men, and while David appreciated the sentiment, it was imperative that Uriah sleep with his wife as soon as possible. This went on for a few nights until David realized there was just no convincing Uriah to go home and enjoy his wife’s delightfully perfumed embrace. So he switched to Plan B and wrote a letter to the commander. He ordered the commander to put Uriah on the frontlines where he would most certainly be killed, forever ignorant of the news of the king’s bastard child.

The commander did not make a habit of questioning the king, so Uriah was predictably killed in battle. The commander sent word back to David that the enemy had surged in forcefully, and Uriah was among those who died. Bathsheba appropriately went into mourning, but as soon as her time was served, David sent for her and married her (II Samuel 11).

In the space of one story, David broke half the Commandments: he coveted, committed adultery, lied, murdered, and stole, all because one afternoon he noticed a beautiful woman. But instead of ousting David and cutting his psalms out of the Bible, God used the once-sinful union of David and Bathsheba to bring Solomon into the world, a man whose renowned wisdom in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes still astounds. Furthermore, God used David and Bathsheba and “the child of their child of their child a thousand years thence,”* to bring about the birth of his own Son. So the lineage of Jesus—of Jesus—includes a gigantic, five-Commandment-breaking sin, a skeleton in the closet if there ever was one. But God’s love covered the whole thing and restored it to perfection, just like Romans 8:28 promises (“God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them,” NLT.). To me, redemption is something like that.

*part of a quote from Frederick Buechner’s Beyond Words