David was forgiven

“Then David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’
“Nathan replied, ‘The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die.’” 2 Samuel 12:13
Over the last few days we’ve looked at various aspects of David’s sin with Bathsheba. It was a defining moment in his life, and is reflected in the tone of the psalms he writes after this point. This was a sin that David knew was a sin, and yet he deliberately went ahead with it. And as if adultery wasn’t bad enough, he added the murder of Uriah (and other soldiers) to the tally. Ultimately God sent the prophet Nathan to speak to David about it, at which point David knew he had do do something.
The law had no provision to cover David’s sin. Both adultery and murder were punishable by death (Ex. 21:14, Lev. 20:10). There was no sacrifice that he could make. He does the only thing he can do: he repents.
Note what happens next. The prophet Nathan tells David, as soon as he repented, that God has forgiven him. That was true for David, and it’s true for us. We see this in David’s reaction: “my tongue will sing of Your righteousness... my mouth will declare your praise” (Ps. 51:14-15). (Psalm 51 was written concerning this very event, when Nathan confronted David over his sin with Bathsheba.)
However, there’s another important thing to note. David might have been forgiven, but the consequences of his sin still remained. The son that was conceived through his adultery died. His children turned against him and each other: Amnon raped Tamar, Absalom killed Amnon. Absalom led a coup against his father and was ultimately killed in battle. We can’t help but think that these tragedies could have been avoided if David had not sinned in the first place. It is exactly the same for us: our sins are forgiven when we repent, but we are not necessarily freed from the consquences.