We have here a series of threes. In verses 1-2 are three terms for justification: transgression is forgiven, sin is covered, and the Lord does not impute iniquity. In verses 3-4 David gives us three descriptions of his spiritual condition: “my bones grew old through my groaning,” “your hand was heavy on me,” and “my vitality was turned into the drought of summer.” In verse 5 he tells us three times that he confessed and uses the same three words for sin that he had used in verse 1: “I acknowledged my sin,” “My iniquity I have not hidden,” and “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” This pattern of threes culminates in a single triumphant line in verse 5, “And you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”
The apostle Paul quotes this psalm in Romans 4:5-8 to illustrate the doctrine of justification by faith:
But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”
According to him, David is describing the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. That may not seem very obvious on a first look at these verses, but that is the first and indeed the main thing we have to see here.
- A Universal Truth (verses 1,2)
In verses 1 and 2 David states a general truth; he does not talk about himself or about the application of this truth to himself until verse 3.
There are certain universal and well-known truths implied in these statements.
The first is that men are sinners. David uses three words for sin here: transgression, sin and iniquity. The first word connotes a willful violation of the boundaries established by the law, the second a missing of the mark, and the third the liability to punishment that is a result of any offense.
The second truth is that our sins bring us under condemnation in the judgment of the Lord. Sin is offense against him, and once we have sinned, we have to deal with him. The Lord is always observing and always judging. He is an omniscient and righteous judge. No sin will escape his notice, and none will go unpunished.
Nevertheless, there are some whose sins the Lord forgives. Again, David uses three words to describe it. The first word is forgive. The basic meaning of the Hebrew word is bear, and its idea is clear from Moses’ plea for the people of Israel in Exodus 32:32: Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written. Forgive is the same word we find in Psalm 32, but Exodus 32 shows what it means: Moses asks God to bear the sin of the people, and then offers himself in their place if God will not do so. That word points us to the sin-bearing work of our Lord Jesus Christ in whom God did indeed bear the sins of his people. Isaiah 53:11 says of the servant of the Lord that he will bear their iniquities – the same word used here and in Exodus 32.
Notice though that David uses the passive voice here. He refers to those whose sin is forgiven or borne, without saying anything about who will bear it. To bring home to us more forcefully some of the great wonder and joy of this blessing David saves some ideas for verses 3 and 4.
The second word that David uses to describe the forgiveness of sins is cover, whose sin is covered. Sin can be covered in such a way that the Lord, the righteous judge does not see it, and therefore will not bring it up against a man in the judgment. The covering for sin that hides it from the searching eye of God is the blood of atonement.
The third way that David describes forgiveness appears in the words does not impute iniquity. Sin incurs debt, and the judgment of God reckons the full extent of the debt and demands payment. The judgment brings up and assigns to the proper account, your account, the iniquities of which you have been guilty, and demands that you make satisfaction. But, again, sometimes the Lord does not impute iniquity. He erases the debt and demands no payment.
The man who receives this gift of forgiveness is blessed. That’s the main point of these verses. He has freedom from condemnation, and he enjoys the favor of the Lord. The Lord is not angry with him but sees him as one who has kept his law and is therefore worthy of life. To him the Lord opens wide his hand and pours out on him all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. He has peace with God and eternal life.
David further defines the man to whom this blessing comes as one in whose spirit there is no guile or deceit. What does that mean? It means simply that this blessing does not come to one who tries to deceive himself with respect to his sins. We have a thousand ways to do this, and these self-justifications fall into two categories. In the first category are those excuses which minimize or deny the sin. It was not my fault. It was not as bad as what he did. I didn’t really mean it. It wasn’t really as bad as you think. I didn’t have any other choice. In the second category are those attempts we make to pay for our own sins. We punish ourselves, by denying ourselves certain pleasures, by doing some extraordinary good deed, by making up for the evil we have done, by extra diligence in spiritual exercises, or by denying ourselves the benefit of spiritual exercises and the joy of fellowship with God. In these ways we try to hide our sins or escape the consequences of them by not permitting God to judge us. We seek a justification by works. We may silence to some extent the voice of our conscience, but the debt remains unpaid. There is in that way no averting of the judgment of God. The man in whose spirit is no guile tells the plain unvarnished truth: I have sinned. This is what I did. It was wrong.
Against you, you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight – That you may be found just when you speak, and blameless when you judge. Psalm 51:4
2. A Personal Experience (verses 3-5)
In the next three verses David illustrates this truth from his own life. He had committed sin. It is likely that he refers to the sin of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, but we cannot know for sure. Like our own, David’s sins were innumerable. What we do know is that he did do with that sin exactly what he describes here. He kept silent. He did not confess his sin to the Lord but tried to bury it out of his sight. He tried to practiced guile and deceit with the Lord.
David describes the spiritual consequences of that silence in verses 3 and 4. His conscience was not so seared that he could sin with impunity. The anger of the Lord oppressed him and brought him into a spiritual wasteland. He says, “When I kept silent, my bones grew old Through my groaning all the day long.” On the one hand he talks about keeping silent, and on the other about groaning, or roaring. The word describes the roaring of a lion in several passages; Job 4:10 is an example. He is roaring with misery. But the question is how he can both be silent and roaring. The answer is that he is silent in only one respect: he will not confess his sin to God. In other respects, he continues to make noise, at least noise in his soul. In fact, the noise is the consequence of his silence.
David further describes his misery in verse 4. The hand of the Lord was heavy on him, and his vitality turned into the drought of summer. He was spiritually as dry as a desert, without joy and without means to restore it. It happens to us sometimes that we become so indifferent to sin, so hardened in it, that it has little or no effect on us. It would be better to say that we do not notice or care about the effects. We are spiritually dry, cut off from the favor of God, but it does not trouble us. We pay attention to earthly matters and neglect our spiritual life. Another way to look at it is that God has withdrawn from us; because we have been so long and stubbornly resistant to him, he takes away even his anger, and simply leaves us alone. That is a dangerous condition, for then we have very nearly reached the point of no return. It is better by far to be as miserable as David was here, because then we are inclined to seek healing. We should pray that God will not leave us in peace when we have sinned but will trouble us until we have confessed.
David found out that silence was not the way to deal with his sin: it only made matters worse. His misery became so great that he changed his mind about it. He describes that change of mind in verse 5. David mentions his sins five times in this one verse, calling it sin (line 1), iniquity (line 2), transgressions (line 3), and iniquity and sin again (line 4). He uses exactly the same words to describe sin that he had used in verses 1 and 2. The only difference is that transgression appears in the plural. It is as if he means to show us that he understood what verses 1 and 2 are saying and means to apply those verses to himself as precisely as possible. He also speaks three times of his confession.
I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” Just as he had used three words for sin and three words for forgiveness in verses 1 and 2, so now he uses three words for confession.
These words make clear to us what confession means. It is a simple thing: admitting to God that we have done wrong, that we have violated his law and are guilty, worthy of punishment. We do not try to hide the sin, to excuse it or to justify it. We tell him precisely what we have done and admit that it was evil, leaving him to deal with us as he sees fit. We know that his dealings may not be pleasant, but they will be better than the misery we have experienced in silence.
The Lord’s response to confession is forgiveness. That is the amazing thing about the grace of God, and the story of David and Bathsheba demonstrates it well. David had spent a year suppressing his sin, until sometime after his child by Bathsheba was born. That was a miserable time for him. Then the Lord sent Nathan to him – that was an act of mercy – and broke through the hardness of David’s heart with the story of the rich man who stole the poor man’s lamb. David confessed his sin, and immediately received the word of forgiveness. So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die (2 Sam 12:13).” The whole burden of misery fell away in that moment. The waters of life began to flow again. Peace and joy returned, even though there was still heavy chastisement to bear.
It is important to see that this forgiveness was entirely by grace. The Lord required no deeds of penance, no heroic works of righteousness, no self-flagellation, no payment of any kind. He simply and freely and instantaneously forgave the sin, transgressions and iniquity. He did not impute sin. This is what justification by faith means. God forgives sin and restores to us his favor without requiring payment of any kind because of the blood of atonement. We receive it by faith, not by works. We do nothing at all except to cast ourselves on the mercy of God.
The conclusion is this. When you sin do not try to make payment for it by extraordinary deeds of righteousness or by acts of penance. You cannot pay. It is beyond your ability. Don’t try either to hide it or cover it up. You cannot. God sees, and, if he is merciful, he will give you no peace. Confess it, and the Lord will forgive. The guilt and misery will all pass away, like the fog before the morning sun. It is truly as simple as that. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1