I am amazed, daily, of how much the Lord loves His Bride and the extent He went to demonstrate and prove it. He is the Lord and is in no way obligated or in need of proving anything to us and, yet He did and, by the Holy Spirit, continues to show Himself strong, mighty, good, glorious and worthy. I am humbled and thankful to be included in that number of souls that have been granted grace and forgiveness of sins so that I can love and honor Him now and for all of eternity. Pondering Psalm 51 has opened me to see deeper into my own wretchedness, apart from Christ, as well as the existing sinfulness that seeks to dominate my mind, life and heart. I not only identify with David's struggles, but I identify and thank God for David's experience of mercy. His God is my God.
David identified the wholistic nature of sin’s corruption by the three words he used to describe it: transgression, iniquity and sin. These three words were chosen to show the pervasiveness of sin and the way it seeks to manifest its presence and power in the lives of humanity. These three words show that there is no part of our lives that sin has not contaminated and seeks for preeminence. Sin is a tyrant and will not stop until it captivates, captures and constrains men and women in its eternally destructive grip. Sin will not let go and because of this David cries out for mercy against the wholistic nature of sin by asking for the wholistic solution of mercy.
David asks for mercy that will accomplish the following: blot out his transgressions, wash his iniquity and cleanse his sin. David leaves no aspect of his life un-targeted by God’s mercy. The Lord must do business in every aspect of his being and so must the Lord do the same for us. While each term communicates the same reality there are nuances in each that convey a kind of progression of mercy's power.
Blot Out my transgression
The act of blotting deals with stains that are visible by cleaning them in such a way that they are no longer detectable. The stain has been so cleaned that what was once there is concealed by what cleansed it. From a legal perspective David is asking the Lord to expunge his transgression. When a person is guilty of a crime that crime is on their record. They are always treated according to the crime. Yet, if the crime is expunged this means that the person is never again to be judged by the crime because it has been blotted out.
David is asking that his transgression be expunged, blotted out, from the Lord's conscience or record. It is not that the Lord would forget David's sin (if God forgot anything He would not be God) rather, David is asking the Lord to deal with him as if the sin never happened. We know that the Lord answered this request because David makes this clear about the character of God writing,
"He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities" (Psalm
103:10).
Paul shows how Christ did more than conceal our sin, He canceled
"the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the
cross" (Colossians 2:14).
Our sin was not expunged. It was placed on another who, though innocent, stood before the Lord with our guilt and died the death we should have died. Because of this we stand before the Lord as if we had never sinned a day in our lives! This applies not simply one sin, but all sins – none of them can stand before us to condemn us on that day. Jesus paid it all which is why Paul could say “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
Wash
When David asks the Lord to wash his iniquity he is asking the Lord to wash out that part of him that keeps producing transgressions - his iniquity. In this way David is seeking the next step in mercy's healing process. The transgression has been expunged and now the iniquity that produced it needs to be thoroughly cleansed.
The washing he is seeking is not simply washing off debris as we wash debris off of clothing. David seeking a soul washing because he knows that, while he would never be able to stop sinning, his actions are not the real problem between he and the Lord. The problem is David himself. The saints of old put it this way: man is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner. Thus, David is guilty before the Lord because of his iniquity (he is a sinner) not merely because of his transgressions (his act of sin). Therefore, David is asking to be washed in such a way that when the Lord is finished his soul would be clothed with a new, heavenly, garment: the righteousness of God.
This is what all of humanity needs if it is to stand before the Lord without guilt on that last day. But this is only what those in Christ have because, in Christ, God has decked us out in His righteousness such that our iniquity has been laid upon Him. Paul understood this which is why, after recounting all of his past glories as a Jew who opposed Christ, he came to see his need for more because of Christ saying,
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I
may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from
the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends
on faith—(Philippians 3:8–9)
Cleanse
David now seeks what I see as the last part of mercy's power: to make him shine! That is what the word cleanse can mean in this context. David had his transgression blotted out (cleared from his record before the Lord) and his iniquity washed (being decked out in God's righteousness) and now, to use a car washing term, he is asking for a heavenly wax job! David wants to be a visible reflection of God by shining forth His glory and honor in his obedience to the Lord because of his repentance.
The purpose of repentance is not simply to have sins forgiven but to so live in a way that the sin of which we have repented no longer obscures the glory of the Lord in our lives. It is not that David is saying that he will never need a heavenly wax job again - we still sin - but that he will not need a wax job for the same sin of which he has repented. When Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery to “go and sin no more" He is not calling her to live a sinless life. She cannot do this. Instead, what He is saying is “go and don't do that sin anymore”!
I think we have downplayed repentance such that we think little of the fact that we are repenting over and over again for the same sin. The problem, honestly, is not with the fact that we sin but with our repentance which is why, as I have said before, sometimes our repentance needs to be repented of.
While David asks to shine as a result of his confession notice that he is asking the Lord to wash him – to make him shine. He, unlike most of us, repents but then arises from repentance asking the Lord to sustain his repentance. He knows that his ability to shine - to not commit the same sin – can come only by being dependent and devoted to the Lord who cleaned him.
For us who are in Christ repentance remains a calling and our gift (1 John 1:9). Our calling to shine is commanded and is rooted in the saving and sustaining grace. Yes, we are saved by the grace of God and yes, nothing can separate us from this love of God. Yet, we are also called to shine - to reflect the honor and glory of God, not as sinless people (this is not possible) but as a people whose lives are not continuously in the loop of the same sin day in and day out. To those cleansed by the blood of Christ Paul calls us to live in such a way,
"that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a
crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world (Philippians
2:14–15).
David teaches us that the wholistic presence of sin is crushed, extinguished and remedied by the wholistic power and process of mercy.