Psalm 51:1-12

Psalm 51:1-12

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

You might not know it, looking at me now, but in university I would go to the gym 4 days a week with 2 other friends and we would weight train very seriously. We did this consistently for a couple years, and then inconsistently for a couple years after that. On one of those days, we were scheduled to work on the muscle groups in the chest and upper back. As part of these series of exercises we were all going to try for our one max repetition, that is the heaviest weight you can lift just one time. I was going for 220lbs (approx. 100kg) – which, at the time, would have been more than my body weight.

I lay back against the bench, placed my hands on the bar the proper width apart; with my spotter standing just behind my head, his hands close to (but not touching) the bar, I lifted the weight up, lowered it down to my chest at a controlled pace, closed my eyes, focused my breath, and pushed up with all my strength… and the bar moved 3” off my chest and stopped.

I pushed and struggled (probably even did the macho gym guy grunt), but I couldn’t get the bar up any higher. 5 seconds of maximum effort felt like a full minute of intense struggle, my hands and arms started to shake, the left side of the bar started drop, and I had to shout to my spotter, “No. no. no. I can’t do it.” 

Hands still close, he closed them around the bar, took the weight of it up and rested it back on the rack.

I could not handle the full weight of it all.

I share that story by way of introduction to this devotional because, as I write this, it is Ash Wednesday. In the liturgical movements of the year Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent; on it we reflect on the nature of our mortality because of sin – “From dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19) “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) Ash Wednesday is an opportunity for introspection and reflection, in the Old Testament tradition of sac cloths and ashes, on our reasons for mourning and crying out at the effects of sin in the world, at visible and invisible injustices, at the personal/ social/ and geopolitical reasons for all creation to be groaning under the weight of sin. 

By the grace of God, rarely (if ever, really) do we feel the full weight of our sin. Ash Wednesday reminds us of that weight more presciently. A weight I cannot lift; a weight that would crush me, were it not for the grace of God, both common and salvific.

In this, Ash Wednesday is also a promise: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to every lasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2)

I cannot lift the weight of my sin to get out from under its oppressive burden; but there is one who can – one who has, one who does. Psalm 51 is a prayer of David to him.

After the prophet Nathan calls out David in his sin of adultery with Bathsheba (cf. 2 Sam. 12), David begins to feel something of the weight of his sin. These words are his prayer of confession and crying out for salvation and restoration from God. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love… Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” (vs. 1 & 2) The reality of what he has done begins to press down on him: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” (vs. 3 & 4) And the just consequences of God against him ring with clarity: “you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.” (vs. 4b)

All of this comes together with two eye opening realities: 1) he is crushed under the weight of his sin (vs. 8); all humanity shares this circumstance before God because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23) This truth is not veiled, nor the punch of it pulled, in the Canons of Dort, 3rd and 4th Main Point of Doctrine, Article three: “all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin.”[1] “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (vs. 5).

And 2) precisely because of 1 above, only God can remove the weight of sin; only God can make us clean. “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” Or, as put in the magisterial and beautiful language of the Canons of Dort, “God also penetrates into the inmost being, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. God infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant.” (MP 3/4, Art. 11)

And this is where the analogy to my experience of weightlifting also breaks down. Because God isn’t just a spotter waiting to help me accomplish my personal best – or to just lift the little part that I can’t handle myself. No, instead, the full gospel of Jesus is that he not only lives the life I should have lived – fulfilling all the demands of the law perfectly, and that he also dies the death I deserve as the wages of my sin; but that he does it all – his merit is sufficient, his sacrifice alone is sufficient; it is his grace that moves the Holy Spirit to enliven (the old language is ‘quicken’) my “dead in transgressions and sin” heart (Cf. Eph. 2:1 & 8). His Holy Spirit regenerates unto justification and his Holy Spirit continues as the power of God in us for sanctification (Cf. Titus 3:4-8). Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and his exaltation ushers in the kingdom of God; now a concrete spiritual reality, but one day (Lord willing, one day soon) a lived reality as the whole earth is renewed and restored to God’s original creational intent and purpose; where one day the city of God, heaven itself, is come down and united in perfect harmony with this world; where the dwelling place of God is now with humanity, and we will see him face to face (cf. Rev. 21-22).

That is the journey that Ash Wednesday calls us to see with clarity. The truth is, I would not be able to handle the weight of my sin, or the reality of God’s justice concerning it; “but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 6:23)

Amen and amen.

Prayer
Lord our God, help us to see you more clearly this lent. To see the cost of my sin that you willingly paid; the weight of my sin that you carried. Even as you hoisted up the cross, and then were hoisted on the cross, may my gratitude for all you have done ever increase as I live for you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

 
[1] The Canons of Dort is a confession of the continental reformed churches dating back to 1618-19, when they were drafted by the Synod of Dordretch to provide clarity regarding the teachings of the Bible on issues of God’s sovereignty and the salvation of believers. This, along with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession, form what the CRCNA has called The Three Forms of Unity – the articles of doctrine that define reformed (biblical) theology and confessional identity.