Does God Have Favourites?

Open the Bible and the arithmetic looks strange.

David took another man’s wife while her husband was away fighting his wars. Then David had the husband abandoned in battle so he’d be killed. That’s adultery and murder, committed by a head of state using the powers of his office. Saul, the king before him, offered a sacrifice a few minutes too early and failed to destroy every animal in a captured camp. Saul lost his throne and his dynasty. David kept both, and had the Messiah promised through his line.

And it’s David, not Saul, whom God calls a man after his own heart (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22).

To many readers this looks like favouritism—as though God has a soft spot for one man and a cold eye for another, and the rules bend accordingly. That would be a serious charge, because Scripture itself insists God shows no partiality. The answer turns on one point most discussions miss entirely: the phrase isn’t a character reference. It’s an appointment notice. Once that is clear, everything else falls into place.

What the Phrase Actually Says

Start with when it was said. Samuel speaks these words in 1 Samuel 13. David doesn’t appear in the story until three chapters later. He isn’t named or introduced. And he has done nothing—good or bad.

That timing matters. A description announced before the man walks on stage cannot be a report card on his behaviour. God isn’t awarding a grade; He’s announcing in advance He has selected someone.

The Hebrew supports this. The phrase is ish kilvavo, “a man according to his heart”, and it sits in a sentence that reads: the LORD has sought out for Himself a man according to His own heart. Those two words are the giveaway.

Peter Kyle McCarter Jr., in his major commentary on 1 Samuel, argues the idiom means something close to “a man of His own choosing”. Benjamin JM Johnson also makes the same case in detail: the heart in view is God’s heart, not David’s, and the point is divine preference, not human merit. Old Testament scholar Dale Ralph Davis presses it further—the emphasis falls on God’s pleasure in choosing, not David’s pleasing qualities.

The contrast isn’t “a bad man versus a good man”. It is your king versus my king—chosen by God’s standards, which nobody could see in advance, not even Samuel, who took one look at David’s eldest brother and assumed the job was filled (1 Samuel 16:6).

One verse here is worth rescuing from misuse. The LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). It’s usually quoted as though God scanned the room and spotted a good heart in David. In context it corrects Samuel’s method—stop shopping by height. It doesn’t say David passed an inner examination.

Paul’s Surprising Choice of Words

The phrase surfaces again in Paul’s sermon at Antioch: I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will (Acts 13:22). Paul is stitching three texts together—Psalm 89:20, 1 Samuel 13:14, and, for that last clause, Isaiah 44:28.

That last source is the surprise. In Isaiah 44:28 the words are spoken about Cyrus—a Persian emperor who didn’t worship the God of Israel, didn’t even know Him, and is called God’s shepherd and anointed anyway (Isaiah 45:1, 4). If that language fits a pagan king, it plainly doesn’t mean moral flawlessness. It means: this is the man through whom I will accomplish what I have decided to do.

Notice where Paul goes next: Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus (Acts 13:23). David is a stepping stone in an argument about Christ, mentioned for the promise running through him, not as a model of virtue.

Undivided, Not Unblemished

Does the phrase then say nothing about David himself? It does—but less than people assume, and something more precise. Scripture gives its own definition. Years later, assessing Solomon, the historian writes Solomon’s heart wasn’t wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father (1 Kings 11:4). The Hebrew word behind “wholly true” is shalem: whole, complete, undivided—the same family as shalom.

So the quality praised is undivided loyalty, not spotless behaviour. Solomon’s failure wasn’t that he sinned more often than David; it was that he added other gods alongside the LORD. David, for all his catastrophic failures, never did that. His heart was whole in having one object of worship, even when his life didn’t match his creed.

And Scripture files the exception openly: David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite (1 Kings 15:5). The exception is marked in the same breath as the commendation. This isn’t spin.

Psalm 78 says the same from another angle. God took David from following the nursing ewes, and with upright heart he shepherded them (Psalm 78:70-72). The commendation attaches to his work as shepherd of God’s people—his office—not to his private record.

Saul and David: Two Confessions

Still, the objection stands. Both men sinned. Both said “I have sinned”. Why did one keep the kingdom and the other lose it? Read the two confessions side by side.

Look at the last line. David had watched the Spirit leave Saul; his prayer isn’t entitlement but a plea—don’t do to me what you did to him. And look at the third. Saul, confronted, protected his reputation. David wrote his own disgrace into a song and handed it to the national worship leader. Israel sang about its greatest king’s worst crime, in public, for centuries.

Here’s the vital point, easily got backwards. David’s repentance didn’t earn God’s favour. It was evidence that God’s favour was already at work in him. A dead man doesn’t choose to breathe; breathing shows he is alive. Repentance isn’t the payment for grace but proof of it.

Sinclair Ferguson has often observed repentance isn’t one act performed once but the whole shape of the Christian life. That’s David. He fails, and comes back. He fails again over the census, and before anyone confronts him his conscience strikes: I have sinned greatly in what I have done (2 Samuel 24:10).

The confessional tradition in Reformation churches says exactly this and names David as its example. Believers may fall into grievous sins and bring temporal judgement on themselves, yet not fall from the state of grace, because they’re kept by God and not by themselves (Westminster Confession of Faith 17.3).

Why God Chose Him: The Answer Paul Gives

So why David? The honest answer the Bible gives is: because God decided to. 1 Samuel 16 reads like a controlled experiment. 7 sons file past; each is rejected. The 8th isn’t even called in from the field—nobody thought him worth a reckoning. Every visible reason is stripped away until the only explanation left is God’s own purpose.

It’s the pattern of Israel’s election: It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you… but it is because the LORD loves you (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). The reason sits in God, not the one chosen. Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck made this his settled emphasis: grace that could be earned wouldn’t be grace at all.

But the strongest evidence almost never gets quoted, and it comes from Paul. In Romans 4 he is proving that God credits righteousness apart from works, and he needs a witness. Whom does he call? David—quoting Psalm 32, David’s own psalm of confession: Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered (Romans 4:7).

David isn’t Exhibit A for human merit. He’s Exhibit A for forgiveness. He’s called blessed not because there was nothing to count against him, but because God chose not to count it.

Does God Have Favourites?

Now to the second half of the question. Scripture is emphatic God shows no partiality. The Greek word is prosopolempsia—literally “face-receiving”, accepting someone for their face, appearance or status. Deuteronomy 10:17, Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11 and James 2:1-9 all deny it of God flatly.

But read the contexts and a pattern emerges. Every one concerns judgement—deciding a case—and every one concerns judging by external status: bribes (Deuteronomy 10:17), nationality (Acts 10:34), Jew and Greek at the judgement seat (Romans 2:11), the rich visitor given the better seat in church (James 2:1-9). Partiality, in Bible language, is corruption in a judge. Nobody will stand before God and find their money or family name tilted the scales. Election is a different category, and confusing the two is where the objection goes wrong.

Paul saw the objection coming and raised it himself. Having said God chose Jacob over Esau though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, he asks: Is there injustice on God’s part? Answer: By no means!—followed by God’s words to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy (Romans 9:11-15).

The logic is simple once you see it. Justice gives people what they’re owed; nobody is owed mercy—that’s what makes it mercy. If a rich man pays off one stranger’s debt, the other debtors haven’t been robbed. A gift freely given to one isn’t theft from another.

And if David were the favourite, look how he was treated

There’s a second answer, and it’s decisive. Favouritism, as humans practise it, means protection: the favourite is shielded, excused, covered for. Now look at David.

If David had been God’s pet, 2 Samuel 11 would have been quietly dropped from the national archive. Instead it stands in full, in the sacred text of David’s own people. No royal court in the ancient world published anything like it about its founding dynasty. That isn’t how a God protects a favourite.

Amos states the principle: You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities (Amos 3:2). Being chosen brought more accountability, not less. Hebrews 12:6 says the same to Christians—the Lord disciplines the son He receives. Discipline is the mark of sonship, not its contradiction.

Chosenness was never a privilege ticket either. It was a job: You shall be shepherd of my people Israel (2 Samuel 5:2). David was picked to serve, and every psalm in which he pours out anguish and exhaustion shows what that service cost.

The Man Who Really Did All God’s Will

One thread remains, and it ties the whole question together. Acts 13:22 says the chosen man will do all my will. David plainly didn’t. He did some of it, failed at much of it, and repented of the rest. The description outruns the man.

Scripture knows this. Long after David was buried, God kept promising a coming king and calling Him David: I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David (Ezekiel 34:23; see also 37:24). The name had become a title waiting for its true holder.

And here’s the detail that seals it. David wrote in Psalm 40:8, I delight to do your will, O my God. Hebrews takes those very words and puts them in the mouth of Christ as he enters the world: Behold, I have come to do your will, O God (Hebrews 10:7). Jesus Himself said, My food is to do the will of him who sent me (John 4:34).

David supplied the script; only his greater Son could speak it without a false note. Theologian Geerhardus Vos taught a generation to read the Old Testament this way: its great figures aren’t chiefly models to copy but signposts, and they point most clearly where they fall short.

So the phrase was never an invitation to measure ourselves against David and hope we score well. It announces that God chooses freely, forgives fully, disciplines those He loves, and keeps His people right through their worst failures—not because they’re impressive, but because He is faithful.

David isn’t the hero of his own story. He’s the evidence the story has a hero, and that it isn’t him.

Related Reads

• God Helps Those Who Help Themselves: Is It in the Bible?
• Why Do People Hate the Doctrine of Election?
• The Purpose of Election: Why Does God Choose?
• Understanding Predestination: Is God’s Choice Arbitrary?
• Unconditional Election: Why God’s Choice Is Entirely His Own
• Called Vs Chosen: Why Do The Differences Matter?