Assurance & Chastening

I want you to see the relationship of God’s chastening to your assurance. Even though David’s sin was forgiven, his assurance was shaken, diminished, and intermitted during the time of his recovery from this fall into sin. And this is evident by the way that David speaks of his spiritual experience during this time after he fell into sin, but even more, as he was being recovered spiritually from his fall. But his assurance in another sense, in the sense of God’s faithfulness to make him into a man who could share in God’s holiness, was most certainly evident and established during that same time. How can this be, that both of these realities could be taking place in the experience of David? It is because God has more than one purpose to accomplish in terms of our having assurance. God does want us to be upheld by the assurance that He will not cast us off forever if we commit a sin as a Christian. But at the same time, He wants us to see what an awful, God-dishonoring thing sin is; how much it dishonors Him; how much it hurts other people.