Psalm 51:1-19 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness… A darker guilt you will scarcely find — kingly power abused — worst passions yielded to. Yet this psalm breathes from a spirit touched with the finest sensibilities of spiritual feeling. Two sides of our mysterious twofold being here. Something in us near to hell; something strangely near to God. It is good to observe this, that we rightly estimate: generously of fallen humanity; moderately of highest saintship. The germs of the worst crimes are in us all. In our deepest degradation there remains something sacred, undefiled, the pledge and gift of our better nature. I. SCRIPTURE ESTIMATE OF SIN. 1. Personal accountability. "My sin." It is hard to believe the sins we do are our own. We lay the blame anywhere but on ourselves. But here David owns it as his. 2. Estimated as hateful to God. The simple judgment of the conscience. But another estimate, born of the intellect, comes in collision with this religion and bewilders it. Look over life, and you will find it hard to believe that sin is against God: that it is not rather for Him. No doubt, out of evil comes good; evil is the resistance in battle, out of which good is created and becomes possible; it is the parent of all human industry. Even moral evil is generative of good. Thoughts such as these, I doubt not, haunt and perplex us all. Conscience is overborne by the intellect. "Perhaps evil is not so bad after all — perhaps good — who knows?" Remember, therefore, in matters practical, conscience, not intellect, is our guide. Unsophisticated conscience ever speaks this language of the Bible. 3. Sin estimated as separation from God. It is not that suffering and pain follow it, but that it is a contradiction of our own nature and God's will. This is the feeling of this psalm. Do you fancy that men like David, shuddering in sight of evil, dreaded a material hell? Into true penitence the idea of punishment never enters. If it did it would be almost a relief; but oh! those moments in which a selfish act has appeared more hideous than any pain which the fancy of a Dante could devise I when the idea of the strife of self-will in battle with the loving will of God prolonged for ever, has painted itself to the imagination as the real infinite Hell! when self-concentration and the extinction of love in the soul has been felt as the real damnation of the devil-nature! II. RESTORATION. 1. Sacrifice of a broken spirit. Observe the accurate and even Christian perception of the real meaning of sacrifice by the ancient spiritually-minded Jews. It has its origin in two feelings: one human. one divine. The feeling that there must be something surrendered to God, and that our best, is true; but men have mixed up with it the false thought that this sacrifice pleases God because of the loss or pain which it inflicts. Hence, the heathen idea of appeasement, to buy off his wrath, to glut his fury. See story of Iphigenia, Zaleucus, etc. These notions were mixed with Judaism, and are even now found in common views of Christ's sacrifice. But men like David felt that what lay beneath all sacrifice as its ground and meaning was surrender to God's will: that a man's best is himself; and to sacrifice this is the true sacrifice. Learn, then, God does not wish pain, but goodness; not suffering, but you — yourself — your heart. Even in the sacrifice of Christ, God wished only this. It was precious not because it was pain, but because the pain, the blood, the death, were the last and highest evidence of entire surrender. 2. Spirit of liberty. "Thy free spirit" — literally, princely. A princely is a free spirit, unconstrained — "the royal law of liberty." (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.} Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. |
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