Sin makes you stupid.
Covering up your sin before an all knowing, all seeing God makes you…um…stupid-er.
It sure made David stupid. Psalm 32 recalls the time between his pillow-fight with Bathsheeba, the subsequent cover-up, and the realisation that hiding stuff from God isn’t a long-term solution to any problem.
Psalm 32 is David on the other side of dragging the garbage into the light. It’s a re-tell of anguish, regret, grace, repentance and release. For those living in the light of Jesus, our Psalm is this: ‘Blessed is the one who has received Jesus and a revelation of the forgiveness that is found in Him’.
Forgiveness, in the Bible, is an event, not an idea. We don’t simply ascend or ascribe to the notion of a forgiving God, we come before Him. A transaction takes place: our repentance for his forgiveness. Our sins/transgressions/balls-ups/stuff-ups are forgiven in the light of his glory and grace…and triggered by our repentance.
Referring to this transaction, another writer paraphrases Micah 7:19 as ‘our sin being cast into the sea of his forgetfulness‘. As far as the east is from the west, seventy times seven. The forgiveness is comprehensive and absolute.
Our job is to own our stuff, bring it to him with a repentant heart, accept his forgiveness and disown it. There’s not enough Horatios born these days, but one of them once wrote: ‘My sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more – Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul’.
Curiously (given how we carry on and how tightly we hold on) we’re not confessing something God doesn’t know. But it’s what causes the divide between Gos and us. Trite as it might sound, ‘sin’ is a small word with ‘I’ in the middle. It’s getting over ourselves that gets us back to God. Our contrition and repentance brings us again to a revelation that his ready forgiveness and forgetfulness are waiting…waiting. His arms are not too short to save.
Confessing triggers bridge-building…and obliteration. It reconciles us back to God.
As many former 9CC-ers would tell you, Luther was on the money with his very first thesis: When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” , he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
David took a while to get around to this realisation. And, all the while, his bones wasted away as his groaning pulled the life from his soul.
Lord, make our path to your hand of forgiveness a well-worn one. Help us live repentant lives.
– Simon Elliott