I’m a mess. Sometimes, I’m a major mess. Most of the time, I’m a minor mess. But there’s always a mess.
Sin is a problem. It always has been, always will be. Likewise, confession has always been the key to mitigating the problem, paving the way for forgiveness and restoration.
Confessing is a vulnerable act. It has me agreeing that what I did or said (or didn’t do or didn’t say) was wrong. It leaves me wide open for scorn and retribution. It pulls down the defenses I’ve become so adept at protecting myself with and takes what’s coming.
Confessing is a bold act. It rejects hiding and takes a step toward those I’ve wronged. It initiates reconciliation by paving the way for forgiveness. It is willing to walk through pain for the sake of peace.
And that coming out of hiding part is pretty tough for me. Like Adam and Eve, I like fig leaves. The sheer vulnerability and exposure of confession is something I prefer to avoid. But I’ve experienced it is positive ways enough that I know it’s survivable and even a beautiful thing.
There are confessions scattered throughout the Psalter. But two psalms in particular stand out as confessional psalms: 32 and 51. Both are tied to David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba. It’s a stunning story about one of the favorite characters in the Scriptures brazenly doing what’s wrong and being brought to his knees in humiliation because of it. The sin, the cover-up, the accusation, the consequences, and the restoration all together make up one of our key biblical stories (see 2 Samuel 11-12).
Having “heroes” like David who blow it so badly is one of the reasons why I find Christianity so believable and so inviting. For not only are the Scriptures honest, but I find myself in David’s miserable company far too often. And because of his psalms of confession, I’ve had eloquent companion prayers for my own confessions, both to God and to others.
Because of David, confession is not new territory I’m afraid to enter into. It’s territory I’ve watched David walk into and I know I am free to join him in it.
Psalm 51 begins with an ominous preamble: For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. Name-checking Nathan reminds us of the prophet’s sly story and blistering rebuke of David which confronts the king with true nature of his sin.
Nathan tells David a story about a wealthy man who steals a poor man’s only sheep in order to have meat for a party. It gets David so angry he wants the sheep stealer killed. To which Nathan says, finger pointing at David, “You are the man!” And David realizes he’s been listening to a parable about his adulterous wife-stealing.
This sets the stage for an immediate dive into confession.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin (Ps. 51:1-2).
Before he acknowledges anything about himself, David starts with God. There’s something about God that he knows, something from God that he needs. God is merciful, loving, and compassionate — the very kind of person, the very kind of things David needs right now.
“I need some kindness, God. I need your never-quitting love. I need you to mop up my mess,” he begs. “I’m so sin-stained, I despair of ever coming clean. But you can do it. So, please, launder this heavy dirty soul.”
And having mentioned the mess he’s made, David gets on with the confessing.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge (Ps. 51:3-4).
Sin and hiding go hand in hand. The brazen transgressor is far rarer than the typically sneaky sinner. We prefer our dark closets. So, stepping out of the closet and into the light is the first step in confession. It’s also the first step into freedom.
At the end of his long life of following Jesus, the elder John wrote these words about darkness and light, sin and confession:
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 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 (1 John 1:5-9).
“I’m not hiding from myself anymore, pretending what I’ve done is no big deal” David says. “My guilty face stares back at me from my mirror each morning.”
But then the psalm takes a surprising turn. He says, “Against you, you only, have I sinned.”
Really? Only against God? How can that be?
What of Uriah, Bathsheba’s cuckolded husband? Not only did David sleep with his wife and get him drunk, but David arranged to lose a battle so Uriah could be slain. And what of the other men slain in that battle? This was a bloody coverup and many suffered for it. And then, of course, there is Bathsheba herself, seduced by the most powerful man in the kingdom in one of the Bible’s #MeToo episodes. What of her? What of the baby that died of the sin? And what of the kingdom of Israel itself, let down by its sovereign? How can he say he only sinned against God?
Does David just brush everyone off and make the whole affair simply a God-and-me moment? And are we to follow in his steps, privatizing our spiritualities by privatizing our sins?
No. That’s not it.
There is obviously a deeply human element to our transgressions. We wound souls. We tear apart families. We are faced with this painful human drama every day of our lives.
But there is something even deeper than our sins against one another. There is a covenant that holds creation itself together that we violate when we choose the way of Self over the way of God. God himself suffers in each of the relationships damaged by David’s sins, by my sins.
I’d render David’s words this way: “I know I’ve hurt people/But ultimately it’s you I’ve betrayed most.”
If God the Judge were to slam down the gavel, condemning David, condemning me with his verdict, we’d have to take it. We’re messes and we make messes of other people’s lives. We’re guilty as charged.
In fact, it often feels as if we were born to sin. But that’s not what God had in mind.
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow (Ps. 51:5-7).
God had other intentions for me when I was born. He planned a wise and good life for me, not this mess.
It’s a mistake to make too much of the poetic language here. Embryonic babies aren’t sinners and God wasn’t giving Torah lessons in utero. No, David is poetically expressing the disconnect between God’s plan for our lives and our destructive impulses. Both seem to be set on their opposite courses from before we’re born.
More important than an abstract theological statement, David is speaking personally. He sees this negative impulse in himself that has been with him his whole life. But more important than that sad reality is a much happier reality. God has been there from the very beginning, working his wisdom and faithfulness into David’s life. This is the deeper and more permanent reality.
So, David asks God to get out the bleach and the rubber gloves, to scrub him till he’s as clean as brand new. He knows it’ll be a painful process. But now that he’s “come clean” about what he did, he wants to be clean indeed. And clean-up work is something only God can do.
We fess up. God cleans up.
Before it’s even begun, David can feel the change of a new, clean, mended life.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me (Ps. 51:8-12).
David has a sense of needing a new creation to take place in him. He is formless and empty spiritually, just like the world before God spoke his creative word. When he uses the word “create” (Hebrew: bara’), he’s using the same word found in Gen. 1:1. In fact, it’s a word only ever used of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Humans don’t create, only God does. And here David is in need of a new creation event to take place in his life. He needs God to start all over again with him. This is why Eugene Peterson in The Message renders it as “God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.”
David has a sense of his need for God’s Spirit to hover over him like he did over the pre-creation chaotic waters of Gen. 1:2. Without God’s Spirit, there is only darkness and death.
Continuing the Genesis imagery, David asks not to be thrown out of God’s Presence like Adam and Eve when caste from the Garden. And considering the sad story of his predecessor as king of Israel, David asks that God not remove his Spirit as he did from Saul.
“Bend my spirit to match your Spirit,” he prays, “so I desire what you desire, so I take joy in what you rejoice in.”
The change in him will lead to changes in others.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise (Ps. 51:13-15).
I pastored a man who had been beyond obese. Simple movements were exhausting. But then he had bariatric surgery and changed his diet, shedding hundreds of pounds. He was a new man, a free man. He’d been saved.
He said that he would cross in the middle of the street if he ever saw another obese person on the other side. He’d become an evangelist of the freedom he’d experienced. He longed for others who were weighed down like he’d been to experience the freedom he was now experiencing.
This is the basic impulse of those who have experienced salvation. It’s uncontainable, unrestrainable. They want others to get in on what they’ve gotten in on.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise (Ps. 51:16-17).
“I could write a big check to the church,” David is saying. “That’d be good. But it’s not my money you want. My heart, broken and poured out like a sacrifice of old, that’s what you want. My spirit, humbly taking cues from your Spirit, that’s what you want.”
Outward expressions are great and have their place. But inward change is the key. Without inward change, no amount of outward expression means anything, does anything.
May it please you to prosper Zion,
to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
in burnt offerings offered whole;
then bulls will be offered on your altar (Ps. 51:18-19).
The last few verses move away from personal confession to a request for God to take care of a national need.
Most scholars agree these words were not written by David, coming from a later date, a later situation, a later pen.
The ruined walls have to do with Jerusalem’s walls, which were broken down by Nebuchadnezzar’s troops and rebuilt by Nehemiah. But what does that have to do with what’s come before in the psalm? What purpose do these words serve?
Interestingly, someone thought there was a connection between what David was doing in confessing his personal sin and what the nation of Judah was suffering. That connection isn’t elaborated on. It’s just assumed. There’s an echo of David’s personal sin, turmoil, confession, and restoration in Judah’s sin and turmoil. If David’s confession can be matched, perhaps his restoration can be matched as well.
Too often, we only look inward when we sin. We only consider our personal suffering because of it and our need for restoration. But with these final verses, Psalm 51 turns us outward. Our personal sins and sufferings are tied to those of our larger community. And just as we need to be restored, our community does as well.
So, without elaboration, we all can make connections between our personal sins and the state of the larger community God has put us in. Our nation. Our city. Our neighborhood. Our church. Our family.
As we confess our personal sins, we move to how our sins have impacted each of those circles of relationships. As we pray that we be restored and healed, we pray that they too be restored and healed. Even if we see no connection between our sins and their struggles, we move beyond a simple inward look and attempts to clean up our own garages and attics and closets.
Real love and the the best kind of praying always moves outward. It never stays with itself and its own concerns.
And here the psalms teach us to move from our own sins to the health of the community God has placed us in.
Not only do I want to sing when I am restored, I want my community to sing as well. I want to be in harmony with God. But ultimately, I want all of creation to join in that harmony as well. I want all creation to return to worship as our basic language.
I want my confession to take part in the renewing of all creation.