by Rev. Alex. McPherson
Psalm Fifty-one
Verse 4. “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.”
The confession continues. What David has specially in mind is his great sin. In a very special way that had been against his fellows. Bathsheba he had defiled, Uriah he had caused to be killed, and upon his own family he had brought the scandal of having an adulterous father, and later they were to share in the miserable consequences of the sin. The nation too suffered because Absalom’s civil war is traceable to his father’s sin, and all the pious in the land must have felt the shock administered to religion by the same. David is to some extent aware of how grievously his sin has affected others, but the reality of his repentance appears most clearly in his awareness of his prior relationship to God, and of the iniquity of his terrible sin as committed against Him. God is the Lawgiver, and the evil was done in his sight who searched and knew David. How depraved the king now saw himself to be in that he had sinned under the very eye of the God of holiness!
Nathan had pronounced judgment upon David; we can read about it in 2 Sam. 12, v. 10-12. Vile and bloody deeds would make his family history a tragic one. The justice of the sentence is acknowledged. Surely it was grace alone that made the king so acquiescent! How different his attitude to the moans of those who complain about the troubles which follow their sins, as if their faults were not so heinous as to warrant such retribution.
It is well to note at this point that God’s forgiveness does not exclude chastisement so adjusted to the nature of the wrongdoing as to be called retribution. The retributive judgments which sometimes fall upon individuals and communities are often related to the sins thus punished, for example, the destruction of Jerusalem and its inhabitants who said of Christ: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” (Matt. 27, v. 25). And, as in the case before us, the chastisements which God inflicts upon his erring people are often clearly related to their transgressions. Lust and cold-blooded murder had been David’s sins. He was to see these same sins enacted in his own household. The thought that a Christian’s transgressions may bring a recompense involving one’s own offspring in trouble and sorrow ought in itself to be a solemn deterrent from sin.
Verse 5. “Behold I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
David is not yet finished confessing. His awful sin has drawn his attention to the nature from which it sprang. This is not intended to palliate the offence by attributing it to something over which he had no control. Many are given to this additional sin in making excuses. “I am rather short in the grain, therefore I sometimes lose my temper.” Rather it is to complete his self-condemnation that David says this. Knowing that he had a bad nature, he had boldly entered into temptation.
This verse clearly states the fact of original sin. The doctrine is rejected by many today, but the Scriptures teach it, and it perfectly accounts for the fact that all men are sinners. There never has been any exception to the rule that the children of Adam, as soon as they begin to act morally, begin to sin. Scripture endorses this by such statements as: “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Psalm 14, v. 3). And, “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child.” (Prov. 22, v. 15). That this evident sinfulness of nature is consequent upon the imputation of the guilt of the very first sin to all Adam’s posterity is equally clearly taught in God’s Word, e.g.: “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Rom. 5, v. 19). It would be the wisdom of every sinner to acknowledge this humbling, tragic fact, as David does here, for it is because it was righteous on God’s part to impute Adam’s first sin to us, that it is just for Him to impute Christ’s righteousness to those who believe in Him.
Verse 6. “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”
The confession has closed with an acknowledgment of the sinfulness of his very nature because David knows that if he is to be saved from sin, it must be from sin in its entirety, in the heart as well as in the life. The all-seeing One requires sincerity and rectitude inwardly as well as a life conformable to his law. The second part of the verse has a hopeful strain. Awful as his sin has been, David now perceives that the whole experience has enlarged his understanding of what salvation is from, and what it brings about. He is wiser now inasmuch as he has seen more of the hideous nature of sin, and more of the majesty, holiness and grace of the God against whom he had sinned.
Verse 7. “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
Here begins the plea for deliverance from sin, from all his sin. Hyssop was a plant used to sprinkle blood or water on persons requiring ceremonial cleansing, such as a leper or one who had touched a dead person. (Lev. 14; Numb. 19). David’s desire is for the real washing which these ceremonies symbolized, and which Paul describes in Hebrews 9, v. 13, 14. “For if the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Nothing less than this would suit David. We need the same so that our souls’ stains may be fully cleansed away. Which leads us to ask, how white is whiter than snow? This strange expression can only refer to the perfect justification through the infinite merit of Immanuel, imputed to us and received through faith alone. In other words, it is “the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.” (Rom. 3, v. 22). Not a mere creature righteousness, but the righteousness which the God-man wrought out in order to clothe His loved ones, shall constitute their cleanness in God’s sight through the ages of eternity. “Whiter than snow!”