The King Who Needs a Savior

blot out my rebellion.

Wash away my guilt

and cleanse me from my sin.

For I am conscious of my rebellion,

and my sin is always before me.

Against You—You alone—I have sinned

and done this evil in Your sight.

So You are right when You pass sentence;

You are blameless when You judge.

Indeed, I was guilty when I was born;

I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

Surely You desire integrity in the inner self,

and You teach me wisdom deep within.

Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones You have crushed rejoice.

Turn Your face away from my sins

and blot out all my guilt.

God, create a clean heart for me

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not banish me from Your presence

or take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore the joy of Your salvation to me,

and give me a willing spirit.

Then I will teach the rebellious Your ways,

and sinners will return to You. (Ps 51:1-13)

Few of us have sinned as egregiously as David did, in open adultery and murder. But we all sin. And every one of us is capable of David’s heinous crimes. I know this because that’s the nature of unconfessed sin. It changes us. When confronted with the results of our sin—as David was when Bathsheba got pregnant (11:5)—we can hide it, rationalize it, or shift blame. And that may work for a season. But there’s only one true remedy for sin, and that is to repent. The question is not, Do you sin? The question is, What do you do after you sin? The answer to that question is a matter of life and death.

Fortunately for David, God chose to expose what David had covered up (ch. 12). He sent the prophet Nathan to remind David that although he thought he had gotten away with everything, God wouldn’t let it end there. And in a moment of profound humility, David finally came clean. The result was one of the most beautiful and exemplary songs in Scripture: Psalm 51. In this psalm David shows us four keys to gospel-centered repentance and confession.

David begins precisely where he should, by centering on God’s grace. He prays “according to Your faithful love” and “according to Your abundant compassion.” This is actually a rather risky thing to say. What if God decides not to be merciful? Shouldn’t we make our case with God first? At least this is how many of us approach God.

But that’s not repentance. Repentance begins where blame-­shifting, bargaining, and rationalization end. Nothing in this prayer suggests that David comes to God looking to make a deal. He’s not bargaining with God, trying to commute his sentence. He’s not reminding God of all the great things he did in the past (“Remember Goliath?”). He’s not trying to explain away his sin. He’s not even promising to do better in the future. No, David appeals to God on the only ground that won’t crumble, the ground of God’s grace.

This is the heart of the gospel, and the reason so many people turn away from it. Religions, after all, are good at teaching people to seek mercy. Do this, say this, pray this, avoid this . . . and maybe God will be merciful to you. But only the gospel says, “I will rely on the mercy of God based on nothing about me.” That can be a scary place to be, but here’s the good news: no one who has ever made the mercy of God the sole basis of their plea has ever been turned away. Jesus turned many people away and for many reasons. He never turned someone away for trusting Him too deeply and relying too exclusively on His grace.

When we’re caught in our sin, our natural inclination is to explain it away. “I’m not really as bad as all that,” we want to say. “It was just a moment of weakness.” But David goes the complete opposite direction. “I am conscious of my rebellion,” he says. “It isn’t a mistake I made; it’s at the core of who I am.” In verse 5, he takes this about as far as it will go: “Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.” In other words, “Hey, you think I’m bad? You don’t know the half of it. This sin stuff? It’s in my blood.”

The theological term for this is “original sin.” Our culture hates the idea, of course, and is deeply afraid to ever say anything like this. We try to convince ourselves that we’re basically good people who make mistakes from time to time. The entire idea of having “deeply inherent” sin seems backward, repressive, and unhealthy. It’s actually the only healthy way to live, as we’ll see in a moment. But as G. K. Chesterton put it, original sin is “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”

This is the truth about all of us, if we’d ever admit it. No one ever taught me, for instance, how to be a lying, cheating, manipulative, selfish jerk. I’m just naturally good at all that. Or take, for example, our children. Children are precious, yes, but any parent will tell you that they are just plain good at sin. We don’t need to send them to “sin camp” to pick it up. Their favorite words are usually no and mine, symbols of defiance and willfulness. And while we grow more sophisticated as we grow up, we don’t naturally grow less rebellious. Every one of us is born a rebel against authority, especially against God’s authority.

We might need to take off our Sunday school hats for a second to realize how bizarre verse 4 is: “Against You—You alone—I have sinned,” David says. Really? Against God alone? What about Bathsheba? Or Uriah, for crying out loud? On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense, but it’s actually the heart of David’s entire prayer. David’s sin really was primarily a sin against God for two reasons.

First, David realizes that his sin began as a sin against God. What was it about Bathsheba that David wanted? Was it the feeling of power? her beauty? a moment of physical pleasure? Ultimately, David wasn’t swept away because he wanted something specific. David was seduced by Bathsheba’s beauty because he was no longer captivated by God’s.

All our sin starts as a dissolution in our relationship with God. It begins as we grow dissatisfied with what God has given us, as we doubt His goodness toward us. So we start to feel God’s boundaries as restrictive, not life-giving. This means the way to deal with sin in our lives isn’t merely to suppress the sin; it’s to increase our delight in God so that we love Him more than we love the sin. The only way to overcome sinful urges is not by learning to love them less but by learning to love God more.

Second, David realizes that God was the most significant One he had offended. What he did to Bathsheba was shameful; what he did to Uriah was despicable; but what he did to God was the most heinous of all. God had created David, had raised him up from the position of shepherd to that of a king, had given him every good thing in his life. In light of God’s goodness toward him, as David reflects on his sin, all he can say is, “God, have I really done this . . . to You? After all You’ve done for me, this is my response?”

I fear that many of us don’t realize how large and majestic is our God. But think: the bloody cross was the price for our sin. Jesus didn’t have to die because of what we did to one another, but because of what we did to God. Have you ever sensed how much He has done to create you, to save you? He took you and me, His enemies, and brought us close to Himself, calling us His friends. That should change how we think of sin against God—not merely as treason against a mighty king but as a betrayal of a close friend’s trust.

We need to see afresh the hammer in our own hands, driving nails into Christ’s hands and feet. We need to hear our voices joining with the crowds, yelling, “Crucify!” We need to feel upset not just because of sin’s consequences but because of what our sin has done to God. Until we do, our repentance will only be a smoke screen.

Throughout this psalm David points out that our repentance needs to flow from the heart. But there’s a problem: our hearts are wicked. We can’t change them, and David knows it. So he cries out for God to cleanse him: “Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” Hyssop is only mentioned two other times in Scripture: once in the Exodus story, as the Jews were supposed to dip hyssop in a lamb’s blood and spread that blood on their doorposts; and once as a means of cleansing leprosy. To a Jewish reader the connection David was making here would have been obvious. David is saying he needs something to free him from sin’s slavery (like the slavery in Egypt), something to heal him from sin’s disease (like the leprous disease). But literal hyssop wouldn’t be enough. What David is crying out for is the hope of the gospel.

David needed someone who could “blot out all [his] guilt.” That someone was Jesus, the true Passover Lamb, dying in our place so God’s wrath would pass us by. David needed someone to “create a clean heart” for him. That someone was Jesus, who came to cleanse our leprous souls, souls so deeply sick that no amount of reformation or incentive could cure them. David needed someone to “renew a steadfast spirit” within him. That someone was Jesus, who imparted His Spirit to us as a sign of God’s grace toward us.

Here’s what is so beautiful about the gospel. David was crying out to God, asking God to purge him and cleanse him. But he also knew how deep his sin was. To be truly purged, truly cleansed, he would need to pay far more than what he possessed. The penalty for his sin—and ours—was death. But in the gospel God takes the penalty of our sin on Himself, absorbing it in the cross. The cross is God’s promise to us that there is no sin so heinous, no heart so wicked, that He cannot cleanse it. And the resurrection is God’s promise that there is no situation so dead that He cannot renew and restore it.