Psalm 51 is a song of repentance. The superscription at the beginning of the Psalm sets the context in the immediate aftermath of David’s sin against Bathsheba and her husband Uriah, where the prophet Nathan courageously confronts David for his sin.

One thing that I find interesting is that the opening superscription says that this Psalm is for the Choirmaster, leading us to believe that this particular Psalm was intended for Israel to sing together when she gathered for public worship. Can you imagine singing a song of repentance that was not merely just some abstract words in a song but was actually attached to one of your spiritual leaders’ greatest public sin and a heinous sexual sin at that? Look at the text with me for a minute…

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

1Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! 3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. 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 will 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 all my iniquities. 10Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

13Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; 19then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Can you imagine singing a song of repentance and immediately being filled with images of David’s horrific sexual sin against Bathsheba, his gangster-like murder of her husband Uriah, and then his response to being confronted for that sin? Most people in the church today would be appalled to hear their favorite preacher confess sin of David’s magnitude (or any real concrete sin for that matter) and then be led into singing a song of repentance with that image in their minds.

If you know me very well at all, then you know that I love music – all kinds of music. One of my all-time favorite bands is a band named Disciple. They have a song that reminds me of Psalm 51. The name of the song is called Scarlet (off their Attack record) and some of the lyrics go like this:

When I think of all you are… I have no words… For your greatness it outshines a thousand suns. And I think of how you love… So undeserved… There’s no darkness that your light can’t overcome.

How great a love he has for us… Though my sins they be as scarlet… Though my hands have been an enemy of God… Though my heart has played the harlot… You gave me more than I deserve… When you washed my whole world as white as snow.2

I absolutely love these lyrics because they paint visuals in my mind of the sins I struggle with, and they help me to walk in repentance. Just as Disciple’s song has helped me to walk in repentance, the lyrics of David’s song in Psalm 51 have also helped me to walk in repentance.

Repentance is not a popular topic in the church today. I think this is a reality for many reasons: humans do not like being told that they are wrong, the culture we live in rejects the idea of objective truths, repentance does not fit within our consumeristic subculture, and repentance does not sound like a flashy or catchy slogan to paint over the church entry way or on the youth group van. And again, as I said before, heaven forbid if we gave off any kind of impression that our leaders struggle with any kind of sin and repentance on the daily (outside of the low-level bad thought or two).

I think this reality in the church today has left a deep dark hole in regards to repentance. Many so-called believers have no idea what repentance is, what the main elements of repentance are, or how to walk in repentance. I personally thank God for Psalm 51 because it is like a road map that helps us to walk in repentance and it all begins with a confession of sin and faith. The way we begin to walk in repentance is to confess our sin and our faith.

#1: CONFESS SIN & FAITH (VV. 1 – 6)

In verses 1 – 6 of our Psalm, David makes a confession of sin and faith. He begins by crying out for mercy based upon God’s never-ending love (v. 1), he asks God to cleanse him (v. 2) – a theme he will come back to in verses 7 – 12, he confesses the horrors of his sin (vv. 3 – 5), and then he wraps things up with a final confession of faith in God’s character (v. 6).

One interesting thing to note here is that David uses three key words to confess his failures. He uses the words transgressions (vv. 1, 3), iniquity (vv. 2, 5), and sin (vv. 2, 3, 4, 5). All three of these key words are crucial to understanding the depth, the darkness, and the horror of our sins. Transgression means “to cross a boundary” or “to break a rule”; Iniquity means to walk in “perversion or corruption”; Sin means “to fall short” or “to miss the mark”.3 When we confess our failures to God, we need to confess the specific ways we have broken a rule, have practiced perversion or corruption, and have missed the mark of God’s perfection.

Our half-hearted confessions are oftentimes more of a confession of being sorry we got caught instead of a full confession of sin and faith. To that point, we should note that David’s full confession of sin – breaking the rules, practicing perversion and corruption, and missing the mark of God’s perfection – in verses 3 – 6 comes immediately after his confession of faith in verse 1 where he remembers God’s mercy and steadfast love; it is because of God’s steadfast love that David can call on God to be merciful to him and to withhold what David actually deserved for his crimes.

In my own journey of repentance, my ability to actually confess the horrific nature of my sin has typically grown in relation to my confession of God’s perfect, righteous, merciful, and loving character. In other words, my true confession of sin is deeply ingrained or founded upon my vision and confession of faith in God’s true character. When I know that God is both perfectly righteous and mercifully loving, then and only then can I truly confess my deepest darkest sins to him.

Another thing to note about David’s confession of sin and faith here is to notice that David says that he had sinned against God and God alone (v. 4). This is not David trying to minimizing his sexual rape of Bathsheba or his thuglike murderous hit on her husband Uriah (2 Samuel 11 – 12), this is actually David confessing that what he did to Bathsheba and her now murdered husband, was out of bounds, it was perverted corruption, and it missed the mark of God’s commands to love one another, but David’s sins were also a horrific crime against a perfect, righteous and just God.

When we sin against people, we sin against a holy and righteous God who created those people to be his image bearers. The penalty for our sins against a righteous and holy and just God, is nothing short of eternal damnation; this is what every one of us deserves – to be separated from the perfect presence of God for all of eternity and to pay the price for our sins against him.

And it is not like David thinks he is a decent person who fails sometimes as we so often falsely believe about ourselves; we have a problem with thinking too highly of ourselves and too lowly of God in a generation that promotes higher self-esteem while admittedly struggling with low self-esteem. Proper self-esteem begins with having a proper view of our sinfulness apart from God and then humbly recognizing who God says we are in Christ Jesus. Self-esteem begins with esteeming God first and foremost and then believing who he says we are as we esteem him.

This is why David says in verse 5 that he was “brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me”. This is not a confession of his mother’s sin, it is a confession that from the moment of conception, he was infected with sin. In all my years of parenting, I never had to teach my children to sin; they oftentimes found new ways of sinning all on their own just like you and I often do too. David’s confession of sin here is a true recognition of the deep sinful infection we are all born into because of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3).

Finally, it is also helpful to notice the final confession of faith in verse 6. In verse 6, David confesses that God delights in truth because he is the epitome of truth, and that God loves to teach wisdom to the hearts of his children. David knows that his sin was far from wise and far from walking in the light of the truth. He knows and now confesses that God is his only hope because in God David has truth and wisdom to continue walking in repentance. This is what enables David to move on to asking God to cleanse and renew him. This is the next step in walking in repentance.

#2: ASK GOD FOR CLEANSING & RENEWAL (VV. 7 – 12)

You and I cannot come to God and ask him to cleanse us and renew us unless we first confess our faith in him as well as our sin against him. Once we have a right understanding of God’s faithful mercy and love, along with a proper view of our sin against him, then and only then are we positioned to ask him to cleanse and to renew our hearts.

When David asks God to purge him with hyssop (v. 7), he is literally asking God to cleanse him with the blood of the sacrifice because hyssop was the spongy paintbrush that Israel used to sprinkle the blood in their sacrificial rituals.4 It is as though, David is prophetically praying in verses 7 – 12 that God would cleanse him, wash him, erase his sins, create within him a brand new heart, renew a right spirit within him, restore him, turn his face away from his sins, to not abandon him, and to strengthen him by the power of the blood of the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ.

David even wraps up in this section after asking God to make him “whiter than snow” (v. 7) by asking God to “restore to me the joy of your salvation” (v. 12). David knows that we have no hope in cleansing ourselves or making our hearts right before God or renewing our spirits with God outside the gracious, merciful, and loving act of God in saving us from the penalty, the presence, and the power of our sin.

This gracious act of salvation by God was always evident in the sacrificial system of worship that Israel practiced. Every aspect of that sacrificial system pointed to the upcoming work of Christ at the bloody cross, the empty tomb and the promise of heaven – our true Promised Land.

Once we have confessed faith in Christ and sin against a Holy God, then we can ask God to cleanse us, renew us, restore us, and to stay with us in our fight against sin by the power of Christ’s bloody cross, and the victory of Christ’s empty tomb, and the certainty of Christ’s promise of eternity in Heaven.

The only left to do in this walk of repentance is to begin walking in obedience by faith, which is exactly what David does in the closing verses of our Psalm!

#3: COMMIT TO RENEWED OBEDIENCE (VV. 13 – 19)

In the final portion of David’s Song of repentance, he recommits to renewed obedience to the Lord. We have to remember that David’s role as the King of Israel meant that he was like the lead teacher and worship leader of the nation. When David committed his vile sin of sexual rape against Bathsheba and then murdered her husband Uriah to cover up her pregancy, he was responsible for fracturing the nation – something that would ripple across the centuries of Israel’s coming history. David literally infected Israel with his own sin and the consequences would last for centuries.

That knowledge does not cause David to resign his position nor sit in self-pity. Once he has confessed his faith in God, and his sin against God, and then asked God to cleanse and renew him, he then commits to renewed obedience to God as the leader of Israel. This can be a lesson for us in the church today: if any of you are leaders in God’s church, in your family, in your business, or in your crowd of friends, the only way you can lead effectively is to not resign every time you sin (even when your sin very egregious) but to instead walk in open repentance by confessing your sin and your faith in God and asking God to restore you and then getting busy walking in renewed obedience to God.

This is what David does in verses 13 – 19 when he says, 13Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; 19then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar. All of what David is saying here points us to the fact that part of walking in repentance is committing to renewed obedience to God.

No matter how many times you fall down into sin, walking in repentance means that you get back up, you confess your faith in Christ, you confess your sin against God, you ask for cleansing and renewal, and then you do a U-turn on the road of life and you commit your life to renewed obedience to God. This is why verse 17 is so crucial for us to grab ahold of. When David says that “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (v. 17) we have to remember that David is broken, not only by his realization of his sin, but he is also broken by his realization that God and God alone is the one who has the power to save him.

What better motivator could we have other than the gracious work of God in saving us from the presence, penalty, and power of our sin? All too often, we try to motivate obedience with fear or manipulation or human effort or we twist obedience into some kind of legalistic venture instead of basing it upon the gracious act of God in salvation.

In David’s case, we can see a strong renewed sense of obedience to teaching God’s Word and to worshipping God as a lifestyle. All of us would do well to find a renewed sense of obedience to God’s Word and worship as a lifestyle based upon the gracious act of God’s salvation through the work of Christ crucified, risen, and returning!

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion… confession, cleansing, and obedience… these words act like coat hooks for the clothing of repentance. One author has said that without repentance there can be no real authentic faith; someone who does not practice repentance is a spiritual fake.5 We must walk in repentance by confessing our faith in God, our sin against God, our need for God’s cleansing and renewal, and then moving ahead with renewed obedience to God.

We really do need to heed the words of this Psalm along with that song from Disciple, realizing “How great a love he has for us… Though our sins they be as scarlet… Though our hands have been an enemy of God… Though our hearts have played the harlot… He gave us more than we deserved… When he washed our whole worlds as white as snow”and now, with that realization in our hearts and minds, we can live in renewed obedience to the God who gave it all so that his enemies could become family at the foot of a bloody cross, in the doorway of an empty tomb, in light of the promise of eternity! – Amen!!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 Disciple, Scarlet, Attack Album, (Words by Kevin Young and Josiah Prince Music by Josiah Prince, Kevin Young, Jason Wilkes, and Andrew Stanton Copyright 2014 Things Left Unsaid Publishing), https://www.jesusfreakhideout.com/lyrics/new/track.asp?track_id=17717.

3 Richard, D. Phillips, Psalms 42 – 72, Reformed Expository Commentary, (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2019), 88 – 89 .

4 Ibid., 92.

5 Ibid., 88.