Trusting God in the Midst of Suffering: Repentance

 

The sacrifice God desires is a humble spirit – O God, a humble and repentant heart you will not reject. Psalm 51:17

 When we realize that we’ve done something wrong, we want to make it right. We want to “fix it.” At least I do. I hate sitting in that state where I am confronted with my sin and feel helpless to do anything about it. The problem is, sometimes there is nothing to be done. The cat is out of the bag, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and there is nothing humanly possible to be done to reverse it.

 I think about this often with my parenting. I tried so hard to be a good mom. I prayed. I learned. I sacrificed. But no matter how much effort I put into it, I am still human, and I still had terrible failings, ones I am desperately ashamed of. I have spoken to my kids about this, confessed my wrongdoing and asked their forgiveness. They were kind and ready to give it, and yet I do not feel absolved.

 This psalm says in verse 4, “Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.” Now Uriah the Hittite, whom David killed in order to cover his sin of adultery with Uriah’s wife, might argue that David sinned against someone other than God, but I like how the NET version puts it, “Against you - you above all - I have sinned.” Ultimately, it was God’s child, one made in God’s image, that David had killed. While the sins of this season may have seemed to be against Uriah, or Bathsheba, or even Israel as a whole, in the end it was against God that David had sinned and God to whom he was accountable.

 The great joy in this comes in finding that while it is God against whom we have sinned, He is also the one completely able to forgive and cleanse us. He can give us the desire to obey (vs 12). He can rescue us from our guilt, even guilt of murder (vs 14). And in exchange, all He asks is a humble spirit that comes to Him willing (vs 17). There is no other sacrifice we can bring of value, nothing we can do to make it right. But when we do, finally, recognize our sin – whether because the Holy Spirit convicts us privately or we are confronted publicly by a prophet God has employed – it must break us. We must be desperately grieved over it and recognize that the sin we have committed was not just against our fellow man, but against God. After all the good He has done for us, after all that He has provided, after all the love He has poured out on us, we still did this to Him. When we are broken over our sin, then we can come to Him with a humble heart, ready to acknowledge and confess it. And praise God, we read in 1 John 1:9 that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Here’s the Thing: God is the One we have ultimately sinned against and the only One able to cleanse us and make us new again. I am so grateful that He is willing and able to do so!