Wash me throughly from mine iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions:
And my sin is ever before me (Psa 51.2, 3).
The dirtiest I have ever felt, physically speaking, was after being drenched with sewage in an attempt in my basement to clear the big pipe going to the septic tank. I stood in the shower for a very long time wondering if eternity would suffice. But there is a stinking, putrid, poisonous filth and slime much worse than this which no earthly means can rectify. It’s called sin.
A sense of this seems to be lost on most people today. “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Prov 30.12). A community of sewer-dwellers discerns no stench. Ascending from the inky depths into the sunlight, coal miners notice they are blackened.
Like fastidious cats, the best Christians are always concerned to get spiritually clean and to stay that way. Especially after the moral equivalent of my day in the basement, the spirit of a true Christian cries out to God for the mercy of cleansing.
In the worst episode of his life, Saint David had sinned grossly by adultery and murder among other shameful deeds. He hardened his heart for a while, but when he was finally tricked into self-condemnation, the pent-up dam within burst, unleashing a torrent of grief, shame, remorse, and near-desperation. He poured out his greatest wish in heartfelt prayer to the Lord, “Make me clean!” A meditation upon his words may help us imitate his good example. Notice three things from our text.
Personal Responsibility
David takes full personal responsibility for all the wrong he had done. All four lines use the personal possessive pronoun “my.”1 Each time it modifies the immorality: my iniquity, my sin (2x), my transgressions. The entire psalm lacks any mention of extenuating circumstances or the woman involved in his sin—no excuses and no blame-shifting. “I acknowledge my transgressions,” he said.
As uncomfortable as accepting responsibility makes us, our typical evasions of guilt actually keep us from the blessings of forgiveness and spiritual renewal by God’s grace. Phillips Brooks said it so well in a sermon:
The only hope for any of us is in a perfectly honest manliness to claim our sins. “I did it, I did it,” let me say of all my wickedness. Let me refuse to listen for one moment to any voice which would make my sins less mine. It is the only honest and the only hopeful way, the only way to know and be ourselves. When we have done that, then we are ready for the Gospel, ready for all that Christ wants to show us that we may become, and for all the powerful grace by which He wants to make us be it perfectly (The Fire and the Calf, c. 1883).
Moral Sensitivity
David’s moral sensitivity is writ large throughout the psalm, and obviously so in these two verses. He calls what many would label “faults, shortcomings, weaknesses, and mistakes” by morally-charged terms instead. “Iniquity” is “highly immoral behavior,” a “wicked act,” and “wrongdoing, with a focus of liability or guilt for this wrong incurred.” “Sin” is “an immoral act . . . a transgression against divine law,” “an action that is . . . highly reprehensible,” and something “twisted from the standard.” “Transgressions” are “infringements or violations of law,” with the connotation of rebellion against the sovereign Lord and supreme moral authority.2
Those friends and preachers who “call sin sin” instead of sugar-coating morally-objectionable behavior are doing you a great favor, like the doctor who finds a malignancy in time for a cure. We act in self-interest when, going beyond acknowledgement, we come to nothing short of self-loathing for our wretchedness and crimes.
See David’s moral sensitivity also in this remark: “my sin,” that is, a sense of it, with its inherent guilt, “is ever before [in front of] me.” Believers know we still need daily forgiveness from God because our sins remain sinful and offensive to Him (Luke 11.4).
Evangelical Opportunity
David held out a strong hope of forgiveness and thorough spiritual cleansing by the very same God he had so profoundly offended. A bad record could be expunged and a bad heart purified by the Almighty’s good pleasure. David knew that God’s wrath was propitiated by sacrifice and the Spirit renews sinners (vv. 7, 9–11).
Such OT rituals and expressions anticipated the redemption to be accomplished by Christ crucified and the fuller work of the Spirit in this present age (1 Jn 1.9). These NT realities should embolden us to pray like David—naked, dirty souls before the holy God—lamenting our depravity and rejoicing in His grace. Amen. Ω
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1The AV’s “mine” is equivalent.
2These definitions are from English and Hebrew dictionaries.