Psalm 51.5:
"(Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me)"
Psalm 51 begins with a concrete situation. David wrote this Psalm after Nathan the prophet had come to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. According to the letter of the law, David and Bathsheba deserved a death sentence because of their adultery, (Lev 20:10). Instead, Nathan said to him: You shall not die, ... the child that is born to you shall die" (2Sam 12:14).
For a week the king fought for the life of his son. He fasted, he spent the nights lying on the ground. It was then that he wrote Psalm 51, and we cannot dissociate it from the struggle of David's soul for the life of his child.
David struggled with God because of the question: 'Why should the child die and not 1?' Of course he had also sinned against Uriah, but in the end his confession of sin came down to this: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in thy sight", (verse 4).
In the struggle to save his child David once again placed himself before the Lord, although Nathan had assured him that his sin had been forgiven. But if God is 'justified in his sentence' of forgiving David's sin, and 'blameless in his judgment', why did the boy have to die? Was this only because he had been brought forth in iniquity and conceived in sin? At that moment David cried: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (verse 5). If this child had to die because of its illegitimate birth, the same sentence should have been passed on him when he was born.
David was not an orthodox theologian whose thinking had been determined by the doctrine of original sin. The Jewish way Of thinking did not include original sin.
If we read David's words objectively and without being prejudiced by ideas of original sin we have to admit that David here acknowledges that his birth, too, was connected with iniquity. If someone says: "My birth was the result of my mother's sin", everybody would draw the correct conclusion.
I can just hear some accusing me defaming the mother of David. But I want to remind you that these are David's own words ... not mine.
It could be said of Bathsheba's child that it had been brought forth in iniquity because its mother had conceived it in sin, that is, outside the law of God. David meant to say: "If this child has to die, why am I living?"
David wasn't thinking about original sin nor even about somehow having a sinful nature. This is made clear by his exclamation: "Purge me with hyssop (as is done in cases of leprosy), and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow", (verse 7).
By the way, those who claim that sin is inherited must also explain why grace isn't? But that's a different matter than what is being addressed here.
As Christians, we must come to recognize that sin is not a biological matter.
The doctrine of original sin claims that man is sinful by nature. If this is so, man is of the same substance as the devil. But then it is impossible to save him, just as salvation is impossible for the devil, for he too would have to be saved from himself.
The truth of the matter is that man has to be set free from the Evil One. Jesus taught us to pray: "Deliver us from the Evil One" ... not, "Deliver me from myself".
The average Christian, however, does not count with the existence of the devil and his angels. And most of those who do, relegate him to the category of being merely a stubborn pest. They follow after a belief system which is demon-blind.
For the average Christian, Paul's words about our struggle in the heavenlies are little more than a play on words. Many Christians believe that man is the author and cause of sin. In this way they have eliminated the devil from their thinking and replaced him by the hypothesis of original sin, original stain and original debt.
They have made man's worst enemy to be himself.
This treacherous thinking has them forsaking the urgency of fighting against the Evil One; they do not seek to be delivered from evil. Instead, they seek to be delivered from their own selves!
Sin is always related to evil spirits. Sin is not a biological phenomenon, not a matter of heredity.
While the woman is mentioned, it is Adam who is deemed the one responsible for the transgression. This is why in Exodus 20 the Law says that the sins of the FATHERS will be visited in the children.
Jesus did not have an earthly father because His life was from the Father. But He knew that this was not the case with ordinary men, (John 2:24-25).
That Jesus did not know or do sin was due to the fact that from the very beginning of His life He was sanctified in the Father, (John 10:36).
In similar manner, our children too are sanctified or consecrated in the parents, (1Cor 7:14). As the parents provide food and clothing and protection in the natural world, so they also have to do the same in the spiritual world. They have to stand in the breach when evil powers of sin and sickness seek to attack their children. It is their duty to resist the evil powers on behalf of their defenceless child because these powers will sometimes attack the child even from the moment of its conception. Jesus, however, was perfectly consecrated by his Father, and thus He was able to grow up without sin.
It is incomprehensible that the confession of this one man David constitutes the foundation for the doctrine of original sin.
We see that in David's family unclean powers from the previous generations were at work. The children will of course first and foremost be contaminated by those powers which influenced and bound the father and mother.
For instance, King Saul had only one concubine, Rizpah, but David started to have a complete harem. Even while he was the tribal king of Judah at Hebron, David already had six wives. David's eldest son Ammon raped his sister Tamar. David did not punish his son harshly, for he loved him because he was his firstborn.
The Septuagint manuscripts tell us that Absalom, David's third son, had intercourse with David's concubines in the sight of the entire people. He did this on the same roof from where David had first looked at Bathsheba (2Sam 16:22). The bible also tells us that Solomon loved many women: seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, 1Kings 11).
David did not count for much in his father's house. When Samuel had to anoint one of Jesse's sons to be king, they never bothered to call David who was tending the flock in the field. It is also remarkable that that in David's case the name of his mother is never mentioned, while of all the following kings of Judah the name of the mother as well as that of the father is mentioned (see for instance 1Kings 14: 21-31; 15:2,10 etc). David was not fully accepted in his father's family, even though he was handsome, even though he was a musician, a poet, a hero, and a faithful shepherd.
All the above being stated, what David was confessing was that he was conceived from out of the sinful activities of his mother's sexual impropriety.
