1 Samuel 12:20 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Fear not: ye have done all this wickedness. — A very great and precious evangelical truth is contained in these comforting words of the great and good seer. They show how deeply this eminent servant of the Most High had entered into the Eternal thought. No sin or course of sin was too great to be repented of. Afar off these true ministers of the Lord saw, though, perhaps, “in a glass’ darkly,” the Lamb of God, whose blood cleanseth from all sin. Isaiah often pressed home the same truth to the sinning Israel of his own day in such terms as, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow;” and Samuel’s words — bidding the people, in spite of the guilty past, yet press on, following the Lord and serving Him with all the heart — were taken up by Samuel’s prophet-successors, and repeated in coming ages again and again in such moving exhortations as, “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God” (Hosea 14:1). They were re-echoed by men like Paul, who, with stirring loving words, bade their hearers, forgetting all the things that were behind, their past guilt and failure, press on still fearlessly for the real prize of life.