“ My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)
Have you ever found yourself more concerned about being found out than about the thing you did wrong in the first place? This happened to me recently. I did something I shouldn’t have, then realised that others might find out, so decided to confess in advance. For a few days I felt awful about it. However, on reflection, I realised that I was feeling bad about others knowing, rather than about what I had actually done. My perspective needed to change! So I turned to Psalm 51, one of the main psalms of repentance.
It is believed that David wrote this psalm after the prophet Nathan confronted him about his sin against Bathsheba and Uriah. The original story can be found in 2 Samuel 11-12. From the roof of his palace, David saw Bathsheba bathing and sent messengers to bring her to him. When she announced that she was pregnant, David’s initial response was not to repent, but rather to try to cover up his sin by arranging for Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to come home and spend time with his wife. When that didn’t work, he arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle. Despite the gravity of his actions, David didn’t repent of these sins at the time. In fact, he justified the killing of Uriah by telling the military commander not to be upset because “the sword devours one as well as another” (2 Samuel 11:29). It was only about a year later, when Nathan confronted him with all the sordid details, that David realised the depths of his sin and truly repented.
What changed in David that led him to repentance? I think it is because through Nathan’s words and the allegory he told of the poor man’s little lamb, David began to see his sin as God saw it. Let’s look at some of what he writes in Psalm 51.
David starts by reminding himself of God’s mercy, compassion and unfailing or steadfast love. Surely this was what he had forgotten when he had Bathsheba brought to him, and when he had Uriah placed in the front line of battle. But now he calls to mind who God is and his heart is broken, not because of the fear of punishment or others finding out, but because he understands that he has sinned against his compassionate and loving God. “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (verse 4).
Rather than minimise what he did, David has a broad understanding of his sin. In verses 1-2, he uses three different words to describe it. ‘Pesha’ in verse 1 is translated as transgressions. This contains the idea of rebellion, of betraying trust in a relationship. In verse 2, David uses the word ‘avon’, translated as iniquity. This has the sense of something which is crooked, bent or distorted. Finally, David uses the word ‘khata’, which means missing the mark, failing to do what you know is right. What David had done was not just one of these, it was all three: a crooked thing, missing the mark of the behaviour God required, and a betrayal of his relationship with God.
David no longer seeks to justify his sin. He knows it comes from his from his very nature (verse 5). There is no blame-shifting anymore either. Now he realises, as Nathan had challenged him, that he was the one who had killed Uriah and taken Bathsheba as his own (2 Samuel 12:9). His sin is against God and God only, and the responsibility is David’s and David’s only.
In order to truly repent, we need to be able to see our sin in the same way. That however much we may have hurt someone else, at its core our sin is an act of rebellion against our loving and merciful God. We sin because we want or choose to, no excuses, no blame-shifting. Only when we start to see our sin as God sees it will we genuinely have “a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart” (verse 17). It is then that we can ask God to create a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us (verse 10) and to restore the joy of our salvation (verse 12). In fact, the more we understand what our sin really is, the more we understand the depths of God’s amazing love and mercy towards us.
As Tim Keller wrote: “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”
By Lorna Ferguson
