Psalm 32:5, 1-2 (NIV)
Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin. Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven; whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.
Long before the writing of gospel verses like John 3:16, Romans 6:23, and 2 Corinthians 5:21, there was penned today’s glorious and powerful little psalm. It carries so much gospel weight that one of the early church fathers, Saint Augustine, had it inscribed on the wall next to his bed before he died in 430 A.D. just so he could meditate on it better. If you are wondering why I presented today’s verses out of order, it is because I wanted to stress the “If-Then” nature of not only this psalm, but the Gospel itself.
If you acknowledge…then you are blessed. But acknowledge what?
The soul-crushing weight of any one person’s sin debt simply cannot be accurately judged by man. If one were to consider only the Ten Commandments themselves, and only took them literally, they might be able to come up with a manageable number of violations…but over a lifetime? Jesus removed that delusional thought from the Pharisees and Sadducees when He repeatedly said, “It is written” or “You have heard that it was said” and then expanded the Law from outward performance to inward compliance. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mth. 5:27-28). The religious leaders looked only at the letter of the law while Jesus went much deeper to the heart (1 Sam. 16:7).
The lifetime list of your sinful actions in addition to the sinful attitudes of your heart jumps beyond measure…or do you still think you are “not that bad” in God’s eyes? Let’s move on to your words…or lack thereof. Jesus said that every person would have to give an account on Judgment Day for “every empty word they have spoken” (Mth. 12:36). The average person utters 16,000 words per day. That’s a 200-page book spoken into existence every 3-4 days…or a library of 6,370 200-page books that you write with your tongue if you live to be 78 (starting at age 18, so I’m showing some grace here). How many “empty words” do you think will be found mingled into that total word count of 350,400,000? To drive the nail in a little deeper, since Jesus also dealt with the heart, we would need to account for the things we thought but didn’t say…as well as the things we should have said but chose not to. Are you feeling that soul-crushing weight, yet? Good. So did David.
What Jesus accomplished on that bloody cross was not only sufficient for your astronomical sin count, but for mine as well…and every other person on the planet that would come to him in confession and repentance. The weight of all of that, as I stated earlier, is simply beyond our ability to comprehend. Of that weight, and the blessedness of forgiveness, Spurgeon said, “A full, instantaneous, irreversible pardon of transgression turns the poor sinner’s hell into heaven and makes the heir of wrath a partaker in blessing. The word rendered forgiven is in the original taken off or taken away, as a burden is lifted, or a barrier removed. What a lift is here! It cost our Savior a sweat of blood to bear our load, yea, it cost him his life to bear it quite away. Samson carried the gates of Gaza, but what was that to the weight which Jesus bore on our behalf?”
Amen. Amen. Amen.
