BORN IN SIN?
Did David Inherit Sin?
Bill Becker
The lady seated before me was a mother of ten children. A comment from a neighbor,
questioning how many of the ten could possibly be “elected unto salvation,” was troubling
her. “Did it seem likely all ten had been predestined to salvation?” Oh the agony and
despair she felt thinking that even one of her children would not have opportunity for
God’s grace! She voiced her feelings. “Alas,” she was told, “such is the reality of
inherited sin. All are born in sin, like David, and are doomed to damnation unless God had
predetermined to save them.” David’s statement in Psalm 51:5 has often been quoted in
support of inherited sin (original sin). But is it true? David said “Behold, I was shapen in
iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Don’t deny it, because David said it. But
what did he mean?
David was the youngest of eight sons born to Jesse (1 Samuel 16:1-10). Yet the verse
says the sin in the conception lay with his mother. This cannot mean, as some suppose,
that David was an illegitimate child, for all eight sons are her’s and Jesse’s and Jesse is
expressly named as David’ father (Ruth 4:17). This sin isn’t David’s acknowledgment of
Hereditary Depravity either. Why? This psalm is supposed to be in reference to King
David’s sin with Bathsheba. Before David was anointed as king God referred to him as “a
man after mine (God’s) own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14 cf. Acts 13:22). If David was a man
after God’s own heart before he was anointed, then what happened after he was anointed,
for it was King David who sinned with Bathsheba? Please understand, the question here
isn’t whether one who has been reconciled to God (forgiven) could succumb to temptation
and sin again; but whether one whose heart had been miraculously regenerated (as per
Calvinism) need now plead for another “regenerated ” heart! For David cried “Create in
me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10)!
If we view this sin as having taken place after David’s heart had been miraculously
regenerated by the Holy Spirit (per Calvinism), questions beg to be answered: Why would
the Holy Spirit need do so again? Was David included in the “elect” when the Holy Spirit
first miraculously regenerated his heart? What power had overcome the Holy Spirit’s first
miraculous regeneration of David’s heart? How had David’s heart become
unregenerated? Is he, at that point, no longer in the “elect”? If not, why not? If so, how
do we explain an unregenerate heart found in “the elect”? But if we view this sin as
having taken place before the Holy Spirit had miraculously regenerated David’s heart (per
Calvinism), then it was while he was still in this unregenerate state that God said David is
“a man after mine (God’s) own heart” (Acts 13:22)! What kind of heart was that?
This text, obviously, is a difficult one. But there is a solution which neither contradicts
scripture nor reflects adversely upon the character of God. The sin to which David refers
is a sin of his ancestral (not biological) mother. David refers to a birth some ten
generations previous in which Tamar had bore twins (Pharez and Zerah) by her father-in-
law, Judah, out of deception. When Tamar’s husband, Er, died, Judah asked her to stay
with his family, promising to give her another son (Shelah) for a husband when he was
grown (Genesis 38:11). Judah did not keep his promise so she disguised herself as a
prostitute and Judah went in to her and the twins were conceived (Genesis 38:16). As a
result of the law against bastards entering the congregation of the Lord (Deuteronomy
23:2), these descendants were prohibited from entering “until the tenth generation.” A
reading of Matthew 1:3-6 will show that David is the tenth in this ancestral line: 1)
Phares, 2) Esrom, 3) Aram, 4) Aminadab, 5) Naasson, 6) Salmon, 7) Boaz, 8) Obed, 9)
Jesse, 10) David.
David, too, brought forth an illegitimate child (Solomon by Bathsheba) and practiced
deception (against Uriah, 2 Samuel 11). The similarity of his sinful actions stirred within
him memory of a like event in his ancestral line (Judah and Tamar), one which had kept his
people out of the house of the Lord until the tenth generation. He keenly identified with
that sin of long ago and expressed himself accordingly in Psalm 51. The realization that
David was the first of his family to have the privilege of “entering in to the congregation
of the Lord” in ten long generations gives rise to a greater appreciation for his heart-felt
statement in Psalm 122:1 “I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into the house of
the Lord.”
