James shares...
God loves us and will fight for us and deliver us, but we must be quick to acknowledge and repent of our sins. We all have sinned, and there is a price to pay for our sins. We have been taught that Yahushua (Jesus) paid the price for our sins, and that is in part true. Yahushua suffered a horrible sentence and death for our sins, the sins that would have consigned us to Hell forever. 
He redeemed us and forgave us, but did not expunge us or relieve us of our responsibility for our sins. We are forgiven and get to miss Hell, and that is an eternal gift from God declaring His love for us. However, every sin commands a judgment against us for our actions, and if each of us understood the cost of our sins, we would flee from sin with all of our effort. Again, God forgives us of our sins, but in no way clears us of our responsibility for our action. There has to be something paid on our part for our sins, or we would never have a fear of God and His just judgments.
The Bible says, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil, pride, arrogance, and the evil way, and the froward mouth do I hate.”1 Often our lives are a mockery to God, because we believe that if we sin, all that we have to do is to ask God to forgive us and ‘presto’ it’s done, and the slate is wiped clean until our next sinful action. This kind of thinking mocks God in that it makes the assumption that there is no penalty or responsibility for our actions. This is a grave error.
In the Bible there is a story of King David who had an adulterous relationship with a married woman named Bathsheba that caused her to become pregnant. It is an excellent example of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and judgment. After David’s adulterous relationship and Bathsheba’s pregnancy, he then seeks to hide his sin by sending for her husband Uriah. He brings him home from the war and then attempts to get him to go up and sleep with Bathsheba. This fails so he sends him back to war with a letter to his commander that will allow him to be killed by the enemy. Upon the death of Uriah, and after Bathsheba’s days of mourning, David sends for Bathsheba and marries her; she then births their child. David’s sin is adultery, deception, and murder. The following discourse is from the Bible:
2 Samuel 12 says, “Then the LORD sent Nathan (a prophet) to David, and he came to him, and said: ‘There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished; it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.’ So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, ‘[As] the LORD lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.’
“Then Nathan said to David, ‘You [are] the man!” Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if [that had been] too little, I also would have given you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife [to be] your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give [them] to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did [it] secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.’ So David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the LORD.’ And Nathan said to David, ‘The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also [who is] born to you shall surely die.’ Then Nathan departed to his house. And the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became ill.”2
The child did die shortly after.
In this lesson we see David’s sin, then God pronounces judgment and David repents, then God forgives David, but does not clear him of the responsibility for his sins. One of the judgments is still in force to this day, in that in David’s linage the sword is still at work. The other judgments were also quite severe. David’s responsibility for his sins resulted in the judgments spoken by the prophets.