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Thursday, July 29, 2021

Seconds! (Psalms 51 #1)

July 29, 2021 (Thursday)

 

Have you ever failed in your walk with Christ? There are some people who believe it’s not possible for a Christian to sin. The other twist to this is the saying that Jesus died for our sins, “past, present, and future.” The reason that is said is because the person wants to deny the continual need for repentance.

 

I think repentance is an ongoing, continual thing. I’m not the type that believes we sin “daily in word, thought, or deed.” Christian theology suffers from extremes. Either we overestimate or underestimate our sin and our need for repentance. These overly simplistic mantra’s replace healthy self-awareness. John says to believers, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” [1 John 1:9 ESV] Notice, John says “sins” (plural) and not “sin” (general). What John is urging us to do is to deal with specific sins as the Holy Spirit brings them to our attention. This is not the repentance and confession of a sinner, it’s the cleansing of the saint.

 

Christians ignore the Old Testament to their peril. We like to say it was before Christ, and by implication grace. However the mechanics of salvation has always been through faith (see Romans 4). We are told what we read in the Old Testament serve as examples (see 1 Corinthians 10.6). I think one of the main examples of repentance is found in Psalm 51.

 

David has just been busted by Nathan for the incident with Bathsheba and Uriah. He cries out, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” [Psalms 51:1 ESV] I think it’s interesting that David asks for mercy. David is, by our standards, a sexual predator. He has committed adultery (rape by our standards) and murdered her husband (who is a close friend). He knows his sin is intentional. He has no excuse. Forgiveness is out of the question. His only hope is mercy.

 

Of course we depend on God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy. For the guilty, absorbing the reality of God’s grace being greater than our sin is humbling. Paul stated, “The Law stepped in to amplify the failure, but where sin increased, grace multiplied even more.” [Romans 5:20 CEB] That word “multiplied,” in the Greek means overflowing. The image comes from a river overflowing and flooding everything. In our world, this is bad. In the ancient world, the flooding brought new nutrition to the soil and filled cisterns (water reservoir). The overflow was life.

 

Getting back to David, he mentions “transgressions.” Remember the underestimating our sins thing? The word, pasha, means “rebellion.” We’ve all seen it. A child is told where the line is, so they go up to the line and put their toes on it. Looking back and not seeing the concern or disapproval, the child will put on a defiant face and put one toe across the line and look back. Like the child is saying, “you can’t stop me.” Finally the child will gleefully race across the line into oncoming traffic. Okay, maybe we haven’t see a child run into traffic (I hope), but the result are predictable.

 

It’s stunning to think we can expect forgiveness when we are not even able to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. Yes, Jesus paid the price. Yes, God’s grace is greater than all our sins. But, I wonder if when we “repent,” we know we are not sorry and we will probably do it again.

 

How about another word picture to capture the gist of our sins? “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.” [Proverbs 26:11 ESV] While the casual observer watches a dog vomit, they think “gross!” The dog, on the other hand, thinks “seconds!”

 

Let’s not go back for seconds…

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