A crucial thing today, one we all need sometime: How as a Christian (not, as part of my conversion, but as an ongoing believer) – how shall I repent of something really sinful or stupid I’ve done?
Actually it’s a vital question for anyone in our culture. In losing God we’ve lost the reality of right and wrong, because these crucial concepts are rooted in Him. But that means we can’t deal with the guilt that our consciences (created by God for our good as they are) genuinely retain when we sin; and we need to, because the sense of uncleansed guilt can really mess with our minds. Where there is no right and wrong we can’t find the certainty of forgiveness, and all we can have is therapy for our guilt feelings; but without God’s forgiveness, that simply means hiding from the genuine underlying guilt, hardening ourselves towards insensitivity. Worse, when we actually are guilty there’s a barrier between us and God, between us and so much blessing and goodness He longs to pour into our lives; He is a God of holiness who cannot and will not coexist with sin.
So, how do we face our guilt, get it dealt with, find mercy from the God who forgives? Even if we’re Christians, saved once and for all, we still need to know how to repent, how to keep that everyday, life-giving God-relationship close…
Psalm 51 can really help us with this. The background is in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. Here we see David at his absolute worst. He’s stayed behind in Jerusalem when he should have been out leading God’s people. One warm evening he sees a gorgeous woman bathing naked nearby, and instead of walking straight away from temptation he watches then invites her for sex. Bathsheba gets pregnant; David sees the need to cover up his misdeed; and he has her husband killed. God reveals all this desperate evil to the prophet Nathan, who has the courage (he must have needed it; David’s an experienced killer) to confront the king. (Maybe Nathan working up his courage is why there was such a long gap between David’s adultery and this confrontation. Which didn’t help, because now there was a sweet little baby on the scene too.)
David’s conscience was evidently calloused, since clearly he wasn’t thinking what Nathan might be coming to say till Nathan came right out with it. But then he does genuinely repent. Now, our question: How, when we sin (hopefully not like that, but we do sin), how do we find mercy from the living God? In Psalm 51 David works through his repentance; and if ever we’re in remotely such a situation we can follow his steps…
There’s only one possible starting-point: desperate faith in God’s infinite love. `Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions ` (51:1). (So different, incidentally, to Islam. This is not just any version of God; this is the God of the cross.) And then (v2) we have to really want forgiveness: `Wash away all my iniquity` – like from a foul garment. `I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.` This is serious (see v5); this is recognizing, this is the kind of thing I do (my temper in my closest relationships; my lies; my greed; my lust; my pride); there is something seriously wrong with me; and if I want relationship with an infinitely holy God, there is a problem. (This is not saying, It’d be ok if no one else knew, or being self-pitying, or pleading special circumstances. It’s being adult: just as in 2 Samuel David makes no excuses, no diversionary demands as to how Nathan knew.) This is real recognition of sin; it’s me who has this ugly cancer, like blood in my stool, or like leprosy (see the allusion in 51:7); `I have sinned.` `Look in your mirror`, says John White; `The person staring at you has sinned. Tell that person so. Don’t pull any punches. Say kindly but firmly that this is the sort of thing that person is all too capable of, and until they wake up to that fact, progress in godliness is impossible.` Repentance starts with facing the fact that this is the kind of thing I do; I need God’s mercy for what I am (v5), not just what I have this time actually done.
And then, again being an adult: real recognition that what I’ve done is, first and above all, sin against the Lord (2 Sam 12:13, expressed hyperbolically by David in Psalm 51:4). God is holy; He is also, as White says, the mighty defender of the wronged and the weak. God is always central and my sin is Godward first; that is one of the things `God` means. It’s not an exact parallel but: suppose you’re staying with a friend who has a yappy chihuahua puppy that he loves; and while the friend’s out you kick that chihuahua, hard. You haven’t just been mean to the chihuahua, you’ve sinned against your friend. So David knows there are many others involved who can be damaged by all this (51:18), but he’s sinned against God, first, and above all. For us too, the beginning of wisdom is the fear (awe) of the Lord, because it’s Him we have sinned against! And it’s recognizing also (51:4) that, God, you are right: repenting means I’m asking You to forgive me, not trying to get You to excuse me…
Then from there, the next step is grasping afresh another side of the God of the Bible, the God of enormous mercy. (See how David’s hope starts to glimmer within 51:6.) However deceitful and dark my heart may be, even as a Christian, God delights to clean it up! There can be no half measures in this: `Wash me… Blot out all my iniquity… Create in me a pure heart` (vv7,9, 10). But this is what He’s longing to do!
So as Christians, how is our sin, our leprosy, our cancer, to be dealt with? There is no way it can be dealt with from our side. David knew this: `You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it`(v16); he was king, after all, and could afford it. But forgiveness could not be bought by a sacrifice on his side; nor on ours. `The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart. O God, You will not despise` (v17). Vital: but, even then, forgiveness – or rather, cleansing – must come from God’s side. `Cleanse me with hyssop` (as if I were literally a leper – the allusion is to Leviticus 14:1-7), `and I will be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow` (v7). Everything depends on God cleansing us; and then, doing the supernatural miracle David prays for (v10), of creating in us a completely new heart.
This is, of course, gospel; but if as Christians we really want to repent, we must retrace these gospel steps. And how is all this possible? Only because there is (v14) `the God who saves me; my tongue will sing of Your righteousness!` On the cross that righteousness meant He paid the price that I cannot pay and never will, so that I the leper could be washed, cleansed, sprinkled with blood (again see v7 and Lev 14:6-7). My sin and Christ’s righteousness have been exchanged; there is indeed forgiveness, and therefore a new heart!
So then on our side what? Again, we must retrace the gospel steps. On our side it’s the `double doors` of repentance and faith (Acts 20:21, Mark 1:15). Psalm 51:17: repentance of all my sin and folly; and faith that I am `washed whiter than snow`(v7), and that a whole new heart does in fact exist in me (v10). Actually that makes all the difference: as Romans 6 makes clear, there was in me something so bent, so twisted, it couldn’t be reformed, it simply had to be amputated and replaced by God’s Spirit. But it was! And Romans 8 builds on that – this means that ultimately the issue of the control of our lives has been settled, and in the long run we’re going to be made like Jesus (8:7-9, 29; cf 6:14: `Sin shall not be your master!`).
But let’s be clear: where repentance is real, liberation from guilt must unavoidably mean commitment to a whole new lifestyle. My sin will indeed affect others (Psalm 51:18); still, repentance means I want to serve God and indeed must (v13), I want to worship and actually can (v14) – not because my sin isn’t deeply grievous, nor to earn God’s forgiveness now, but arising inevitably out of what v12 calls a `willing spirit`. David wants to pass all this on, and he did, and his Psalm 51 has shown many of us the way home…
Yes, as Christians we mess up. But there is nothing God cannot forgive. It is true that our sins have consequences. If I sin sexually, there may be a pregnancy, with all sorts of ramifications. And when a leader sins there can be massive consequences, necessitating very clear acts of repentance (see Leviticus 4), and probably standing down from ministry for some while. (Gordon Macdonald’s Rebuilding Your Broken World is good on this.) But while the results of my sin can be very serious indeed, they are still, ultimately, limited. So with 51:11: David as an old testament believer desperately feared having the Holy Spirit taken from him (he’d seen it happen, 1 Sam 16:13-14); but we after Pentecost are all `born again of the Spirit`, and can never lose Him again (Rom 8:9). There can be real loss, real damage, even real discipline ahead; but once we’re born again, in the end nothing at all can `separate us from the love of Christ` (Rom 8:35-39). Sometimes this phrase `born again` gets used as a joke; but it’s so vital for us to know, and help those we care about to know, whether we are born again or not; and that, if we are, we’ve begun a whole new, eternal, imperishable (1 Peter 1:23) life – God has indeed `created in us a pure heart…` If we don’t grasp that certainty of the one-off new birth (and alas many forms of Christianity don’t, and it shows), we’ll be left with a religion of guilt. If we grasp it, we will have the assurance of 1 John 5:13: `You may know that you have eternal life!`. Christ will never take that away; indeed He won’t rest till we His children – stupid, sinning, failing as we are, but yet at root, born again, repentant, and trusting – have grown and changed to share all the radiant glory of His wonderful holiness…
`If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness… My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But, if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins; and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world` (1 John). Hallelujah!
PS I’ve found John White’s brilliant book People in Prayer (also published as Daring to Draw Near; and in Russian, Lyudi v Molitve) superb on Psalm 51. A really fantastic book on God in the old testament!
