Read Psalm 51:5-9. 5Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. 6Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. 7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. 9Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
David is preaching the gospel to his secret heart by recalling these two truths: The absoluteness of his sinful state and the absoluteness of God’s forgiveness. David isn’t basically good and just happened to mess up. No, he was born in absolute iniquity and his sin simply reveals who he truly is. Our sin is always in character for us.
And God’s absolute forgiveness is always in character for him. There is no partial purging here, no incomplete cleansing. Each individual transgression is blotted out of the record. The sins David once hid from God, God now keeps hidden from his face.
Are you constantly preaching these same two truths to your secret heart, how wicked you are, and yet how forgiven and loved you are at the same time? This is to live is Christ – simultaneously trapped in our human weakness, yet set free by our union with him. But only one of these realities is eternal. David’s move to the future tense lets us know that our eternity in Christ is one of joy and gladness, of once broken bones now rejoicing, of a new heart that is free from all iniquity.
Prayer. Jesus, in you I am both wicked and I am loved. But I know that only one of those truths will last forever. May I live in the light of truth in my inner being today and every day. Amen.
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To Live is Christ 