Today you should read: 2 Samuel 12:1-15
Chapter 11 was the well-known chapter of David and Bathsheba, but not a lot of people talk about the next chapter. This is the part where God sends Nathan to king David to tell him that he sinned against God (verses 7-10). These verses show us a couple things about self-reflection and the punishment for sin.
The first thing you may have noticed was that God sent Nathan to him. This shows that God puts people in our lives to hold us accountable. Nathan told him about a rich man that takes a poor man’s only lamb to serve to his guests instead of one of the lambs from his many flocks of lambs (verses 1-4). David clearly sees how wrong this is and says that the rich man deserves to die (verses 5-6). Then Nathan tells him that this was a story that was alluding to what he did to Uriah by taking Bathsheba and sending Uriah to be killed in battle. I think we all agreed that David sinned against God. Does this mean that David deserved the same judgement that David said the rich man deserved?
The answer is clearly stated at the beginning of Romans 6:23 when it says, “For the wages of sin is death…” David deserved this punishment, but God chose to show him grace. We all deserve this punishment for our sins, but God showed us grace the same way he showed David grace. But sin still deserves punishment. In David’s case, the punishment was a curse on his house and the death of his child. Likewise, our sin deserves a punishment, but Jesus took the punishment for us. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences for our actions, but instead it is showing us that the eternal consequences for sin have been paid.
By: Jacob Kerr — Pastoral Ministry Apprentice: Worship and Students at West Campus
JumpstartCPC.com 
Good word today Jacob! One of my favorite verses in scripture is John 1:14.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The painful “truth” is that sin has significant consequences in our lives and can even impact multiple generations. Jesus is full of grace and will forgive ANY sin if a man repents and asks forgiveness but the truth of sin’s impact remains. Praise God we are on this earth only a short time and the consequences of our sin are not eternal.