Psalm 51: David's Suitcase of Sin

Read Psalm 51.

David's suitcase of sin

Listen to the opening verses of Psalm 51. In it, we hear David crying out for relief from his own suitcase of sin. He says,  

"Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin!" (Psalm 51:1-2). 

The superscription says that David offered this prayer after his sin with Bathsheba. David, after being called out for hooking up with Bathsheba and arranging the murder of her husband Uriah, is desperate for relief from the crushing weight of what he has done. He cannot live with this burden much longer. The Psalm does say in verse 4, “Against you, you alone, have I sinned,” not something most of us would say in this situation. I think most of us would like to see some admission of his wrong against Uriah, Bathsheba, and eventually, the death of the child. Yet, he was not seeking a mere free pass for a mistake that he made, nor was he just wanting God to withhold righteous anger and judgment while the king and his God went their separate ways. David was seeking nothing less than a restoration of the most important relationship in his life. He was seeking what some have called “redemptive” forgiveness.

So maybe we should view it as a model prayer for ourselves to pray when we have gone astray. In fact, it has long served that function. This psalm stands, with its petitions to make the penitent desire truth inside, to be washed morally clean again, to have a right spirit installed within and so on. Moreover, if we are honest about our sins, what we find is that this prayer, and indeed, many Prayers of Confession, fit us in the ways that really matter.

Think of it this way. The plea to “blot out my transgressions” (v. 1) and the repeated references to cleansing throughout the psalm are evidence of the assurance that God’s redemptive forgiveness extends far beyond our last sinful act. When we come to God in confession and repentance, we know that God’s primary concern is to reconcile the relationship. God is no divine claims adjuster who raises the cost of our sin with each incident, but instead God will “Hide [God’s] face from [our] sins” (v. 9). We can dump them in the circular file, delete them from the database, or lose the luggage.

 

We have to recognize, however, that the purpose of God’s forgiveness is not simple absolution, waiting the next time we sin. Redemptive forgiveness is about clearing the way for a renewed relationship to take place — a relationship where the “joy of [God’s] salvation” wins out over the self-serving pleasures of sin (v. 12). We receive God’s grace not as a license to sin even more, knowing that God will forgive us.  Grace and forgiveness are about transformation — about a “willing spirit” to change and a “broken spirit,” that recognizes constant dependence upon God (vv. 12, 17). Redemptive forgiveness enables us to move in a new direction where sin is not in the driver’s seat of our lives.