For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
Psalm 51:3-4
This is a very interesting part of David’s confession, and there is a lot we can learn from it about what a true heart for God looks like. David says that his sin is ever before him, what does this mean?
I think this is a litmus test for a truly repentant heart. The question is, do you see your sin? It might sound like a simple question, but human beings have a remarkable capacity not to see their own sin. We are very good at ignoring, rationalizing, deflecting, blaming, and just flat our denying our sinfulness. Notice that David makes no attempt at all to shift the blame or to rationalize his sin before God. He uses phrases like “my sin”, “my transgressions”, and “I sinned”.
The old puritan pastor and theologian Thomas Brooks once wrote, “nothing in the world is ours so much as our sin.” Oh how we wish it weren’t true. We would like to pass it off on somebody else, we would like to say it was our circumstances and that we are really the victim, but David’s prayer shows us that the pathway back to God is not going around our sin, it is facing it!
C.H. Spurgeon wrote this about what it means to face our sin...”To an awakened conscience, pain on account of sin is not fleeting or momentary, it is constant. This is no sign of divine wrath, but rather a preface to abounding grace.”
Sometimes, facing our sin means we need someone to help us see it, someone to point it out to us. God sent the prophet Nathan to do that for David. Nathans help us see what we have become callous and blinded to in ourselves. Nathans help point us back to God by pointing out where have strayed from Him. If you have a Nathan in your life, you should praise God for sending them to you. I know, I know, my first reaction when somebody tries to point out sin in my life is not usually to thank them and to praise God either. But I have had some Nathans in my life, individuals that God used to help me see an attitude or and area of my life that was not pleasing to him, that was sinful. Looking back, I can see that God used those people to help me truly see my sin, and to repent and seek God’s forgiveness. They were the beginning of my restoration to a right relationship with God. Being a Nathan is not an easy job, but in a sense, this is one of the most loving things you can do for a person.
In the second part of the passage, David says, “against you and you only have I sinned.” What is David talking about here? What about Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba, the one David lied to and had killed, didn’t David sin against him? What about Bathsheba? Didn’t David sin against her? What about the kingdom of Israel? Didn’t David sin against the people when he committed these terrible offenses? Of course he did, David sinned against all of these and more.
David is not saying that he hasn’t hurt anyone else through his sin, he is saying that he sinned against God first. Your (and mine) sin which wounds another, is wrong first because it offends God, and only secondarily because it hurt others. David understands that true confession means getting the audience right. If we think of our sin purely in terms of earthly consequences and human relationships, then we will be much more likely to give ourselves a pass at times. We may think, “well this is really as much her fault as it is mine”, “I’m sure they understand that I didn’t mean it the way it sounded”, etc. But if we come to see our sin as an offense against a Holy God, the one who made us in His image, The Creator of all that exists, the King of Glory, then we will have no excuse (and that is the point). This is what David means when he says, “against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight”. David is insisting on seeing his sin the way God sees it. This is the only way that he, and we, can come to the place where can say...
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Psalm 103:8-12
Jeff Frazier
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