Catholic Commentary
David's Witness: Righteousness Apart from Works
6Even as David also pronounces blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:7“Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.8Blessed is the man whom the Lord will by no means charge with sin.”
Romans 4:6–8 establishes that God credits righteousness to people apart from works by citing David's testimony that the blessed person is one whose sins are forgiven and not charged against them. Paul uses the parallel language of reckoning (logízomai) to show that divine justification and the non-imputation of sin are complementary aspects of a single act of grace.
David's witness proves what Paul is claiming: God makes you righteous by erasing your sin, not by grading your performance—and the deeper the sin, the sweeter the forgiveness.
Romans 4:6 — "David also pronounces blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works"
Paul has just argued (4:1–5) that Abraham was justified by faith, not circumcision or legal works, citing Genesis 15:6. Now he reaches for a second, rhetorically powerful witness: David. In the Jewish legal tradition, two witnesses were required to establish a matter (Deut 19:15). Abraham (the forefather of Israel) and David (the king through whom the messianic promise flowed) together constitute a complete Scriptural testimony. The verb logízomai ("counts," "reckons," "credits") is the same Greek word Paul used in 4:3, linking the two witnesses through a common vocabulary of divine imputation. The phrase "apart from works" (chōrís ergōn) is a striking negative formulation — Paul is not merely saying faith is sufficient but that the absence of works is not an obstacle to God's reckoning. The "man" (anthrōpos) is deliberately universal: Paul is gesturing beyond Israel toward humanity as such.
Romans 4:7 — "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven"
Paul quotes the Septuagint (LXX) version of Psalm 32:1, itself a psalm attributed to David after — tradition unanimously holds — his repentance for the sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah (2 Sam 11–12; cf. Ps 51). This is crucial context Paul's readers would have felt immediately. David's "blessedness" was not the blessedness of a man who had kept the Law flawlessly; it was the blessedness of a man who had committed grave sin and experienced God's gratuitous pardon. The Greek aphíēmi ("forgiven," literally "sent away") and epikalýptō ("covered") are two distinct images: sin as a debt canceled, and sin as a shame veiled from sight. Neither image involves the sinner doing anything to undo the sin — the action is entirely God's. The plural ("iniquities," "sins") is notable: not a single lapse but the accumulated weight of human transgression is what God "sends away."
Romans 4:8 — "Blessed is the man whom the Lord will by no means charge with sin"
The second beatitude from Psalm 32:2 intensifies the first through litotes: the double negative ou mē logisamai ("will by no means reckon/charge") in the LXX is as emphatic as Greek allows. Where verse 7 described forgiveness as a positive act (sending away, covering), verse 8 describes its permanent consequence: a divine decision not to hold sin against the person. The word logisamai here echoes the logízomai of the entire chapter — righteousness is "reckoned" to Abraham, and sin is not reckoned to the forgiven. Paul is showing a structural parallel: to have righteousness counted to you and to have sin not counted against you are two sides of the same gracious divine act.
Typological and spiritual senses: The Fathers saw David in Psalm 32 as a type of the repentant sinner who prefigures Christian baptism and penance. Augustine in particular, in his Enarrationes in Psalmos on Psalm 32, dwells on the joy (exultatio) of the forgiven soul as the truest human happiness — surpassing all earthly satisfaction. The "covering" of sin prefigures Christ's atoning work, in which the Blood of the Lamb literally covers the guilt of humanity. The threefold movement in Psalm 32:1–2 — forgiveness, covering, non-imputation — was read by the Fathers as corresponding to the threefold grace of baptism: absolution of past guilt, the white garment of sanctifying grace, and the gift of adoptive sonship which changes one's standing before God entirely.
Catholic tradition reads these verses at the intersection of three great doctrines: justification, forgiveness, and the sacramental life.
On justification, the Council of Trent (Session VI, Decree on Justification, 1547) carefully affirmed that justification is not merely the forgiveness of sins but an interior renewal — a real transformation, not only a forensic declaration. This does not contradict Paul's point; rather, Catholic exegesis sees the "non-imputation" of verse 8 as the negative aspect of what Trent describes positively: the sanctifying grace infused at justification genuinely removes the guilt of sin, so that God's non-imputation is grounded in a real change in the soul, not a legal fiction. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 113) argues that forgiveness and the infusion of grace are simultaneous aspects of a single divine movement.
On forgiveness, the Catechism teaches that "there is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive" (CCC 982) — a claim that echoes the Davidic blessedness of Psalm 32 precisely as Paul deploys it. Even the gravest sin — and David's sins (adultery, conspiracy to murder) were grave — can be "sent away."
On sacramental life, Augustine and the later tradition connected this passage to the Sacrament of Penance. The "covering" of sin is not merely a metaphor; it is enacted sacramentally when the priest pronounces absolution. The penitent re-enters the condition David celebrated: the blessedness of the one against whom God "will by no means" count sin. Pope John Paul II's Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (1984, §31) echoes this by describing the confessed sinner as restored to full communion with God and the Church.
For the contemporary Catholic, these verses strike at a subtle but pervasive spiritual problem: the tendency to relate to God primarily through a ledger of performance. Many Catholics unconsciously inhabit a spiritual world where they feel acceptable to God only when their recent record is clean, their prayer life consistent, their charity impressive. Paul — through David — dismantles this anxiety at its root. David was an adulterer and a murderer. His blessedness, the deepest joy he ever knew, came not from his achievements but from the moment God "sent away" his sins.
This is an urgent message for Catholics who stay away from Confession because they feel "not ready" or "too ashamed." The passage suggests the logic runs precisely the other way: the deeper the sin, the more fully one can know the blessedness David describes. Concretely: if you have been avoiding the Sacrament of Penance, let David's witness move you toward it. The blessing Paul describes is not hypothetical — it is available in every confessional. Go. The Lord will "by no means" charge you with what you confess.