WHEN I PASTORED A CHURCH that had a regular weekly prayer meeting, there was a man who closed his prayer every week by saying, “…and forgive us our sins, for they are many.” I understand what he meant, but I sometimes wish I had asked him, “Do you ever get more specific than that?”
When Jesus taught his disciples to include confession of sin in their prayers – “Forgive us our debts…” – he did not mean we should tack on these words to our prayers as a kind of general request for forgiveness.
Psalm 139 ends with a rather frightening request: “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” As he meditates on the depths of God’s knowledge, he is aware that God knows his heart far more clearly than he does. We tend to be blind to the desires, attitudes, and assumptions that shape our choices. While we are aware of some of our sins, we are not usually aware of the heart attitudes that drive our sinful words and behavior. The psalmist is open to having God show him the truth about his thoughts and attitudes.
What about you? Are you willing to have God show you what’s in your heart? If you’re honest, you have to admit that you’re not all that excited about the prospect of discovering the truth about the depths of sin in your heart. I’m with you on that one. I can’t say I’m as excited about knowing the “grievous way” in my heart as the psalmist seems to be. I like the philosophy “ignorance is bliss” or “what I don’t know can’t hurt me.”
When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, they felt shame and tried to hide. That’s what sinners do. Sinful people don’t want to face the truth about their sin. We avoid facing the truth about our hearts.
That’s why the Westminster Confession of Faith says repentance is an “evangelical grace.” The word “evangelical” comes from the word “evangel” which means “gospel.” So repentance is a gospel grace. That I would ever truly repent is evidence that God is at work in me, that his Spirit has created new life in me. When I find in my heart a willingness to repent and face the truth about my sin, that should move me with joy. I would never be willing to face the depths of sin in my heart unless God was at work in my life. A willingness to repent honestly is an evidence of God’s saving presence.
Gospel grace
Repentance starts with seeing the truth about your sin – seeing it as an offense against God, as contrary to God’s nature, and as rebellion against his righteous commands. Repentance is a gospel grace. It is not something you work up in yourself or accomplish by your own determination and resolve. It is a work of grace; an undeserved gift given to you by God. The inclination to repent, the willingness to repent, and actually repenting are all something God stirs up in you.
At the same time, confessing our sin and repenting of it is a battle. Something in our hearts resists admitting the truth about our sin. Even talking about sin and our need for confession and repentance sounds negative. You may be thinking, “Isn’t there a more pleasant subject we could talk about?”
Confessing the truth about your heart and repenting of sin is intolerable apart from the gospel. Shame is a powerful feeling. Sin produces not only a sense of guilt, but feelings of shame and dirtiness. That’s why we hide the truth about our hearts, deny our sin is real or stuff it down deep inside. Guilt is knowing you have done something wrong. Shame is the feeling that something is wrong with you.
But if you know and believe that Jesus bore the guilt of your sin and that he bore your shame in his death in your place, you can come to him and face the truth about your heart. You can know that God, in his amazing love for you, is working to set you free from the slavery sin creates in your life.
Repentance is the flip side of faith. If you know you are loved and accepted you don’t have to be afraid of what other people think about you if they know the truth about your sin. All that matters in the end is that God knows the truth and that he forgives you and restores you when you come to him in repentance.
Facing the truth
Repentance involves being sorry for your sin, grieving over your sin, hating it, turning from it to God, and pleading with God to change your heart. Repentance involves depending on God to give you new desires that will produce changed behavior.
Because God is for you, you can face the truth about your sinful heart.
Prayer is about intimacy with God – knowing and being known in an environment of security. When you are confident that he loves you and accepts you, you don’t have to hide from God in fear. Grace sets you free to trust God. You don’t have to be afraid of what you’ll discover if God shows you what’s in your heart. He is not against you. He is for you. He proved this by giving his own Son to bear the punishment for sin in our place.
Suppose you find the courage to pray: “Father, I want to know you. I want to be thirsty and hungry for you. I want to delight my soul in you. Would you search me, O God, and know my heart. Would you try me and know my thoughts. Would you see if there is any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Show me what is in my heart and change my heart.” How would God answer that prayer?
What if later in the day, after you’ve asked God to show you the truth about the sin in your heart, you have a disagreement with your wife. In the process, you say something that you know hurts her feelings. You start to feel bad about what you said, so you come to her and say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” But instead of quickly forgiving you, suppose she finds the courage to say, “What does that mean? What are you asking me to forgive? It would help if you could tell me specifically what you did that needs my forgiveness.”
You could say, “Well, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I shouldn’t have said what I said and hurt your feelings.”
She thinks about that, and says, “I’m still not clear on what you think you did that needs forgiving. Are you saying ‘you’re sorry’ because I took offense at what you said…that I took it the wrong way? So it’s really my fault that I feel hurt and I shouldn’t be so sensitive? Tell me what exactly it is you did that needs my forgiveness?”
That kind of honest probing reply brings up defensiveness and anger. That’s been my experience. When I asked my wife to forgive me, she, being a sweet Christian woman, was obligated to say, “Okay, I forgive you.” I took that to mean the discussion was now closed. After all, if you forgive someone, you don’t bring the offense up again, right? So, time after time, I would shut down all discussion by quickly asking my wife to forgive me. In this way, I was not forced to look at what was really driving my heart.
Finally, a friend suggested that instead of asking Margaret to forgive me when I knew I had offended her, I should say something like: “I am sorry I hurt you by what I said. Can you help me understand how my words hurt you?” My friend suggested I should listen and think about what she’s saying without defending myself or trying to explain why what I said or did was reasonable.
When I began to really listen to my wife, I began to see how I had hurt her in ways I had never intended or considered. It drove me to Christ in repentance at a level I had never experienced before. I didn’t want to face the truth about my sin. I did all I could to avoid having to see what was in my heart. But God in his grace let me see what was there so I would understand more clearly how desperately I needed him to change my heart.
Underneath the surface
Repentance is a gospel grace. Because God loves us, he wants what is best for us – he wants to set us free from controlling patterns of sin that remain in our hearts. And the first step is seeing the truth about what is driving our sinful thoughts, words and actions.
If you confess sin generally, you never get around to facing the sinful heart attitudes that are behind the surface sins.
There is a great statement in the Westminster Confession of Faith about being specific when it comes to confessing sin:
“Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man’s duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly” (WCF chapter 15, section 5).
If it would help, you can substitute the word “specific” for the word “particular” – it is our duty to repent of specific sins, specifically. General confession – “forgive me for my many sins” – won’t force you to see how desperately you need a Savior. It is a gospel grace when God shows you specifically what is in your heart and drives you to repentance for specific sins.
How will God show you the truth about your sin and lead you to repentance? If you belong to him, he will work in you to show you your sin and lead you to repentance. A lack of repentance over time should make you question whether or not God’s Spirit is in you at all.
How will God do it?
Sometimes by bringing conviction of sin to your conscience. Sometimes through a friend, a parent, your spouse – someone who tells you something you need to hear. Sometimes it takes more.
David’s sin
As you read the account of David’s life in the Bible, you can see God working to bring David to an awareness of his sin in different ways:
Early in his life, when Saul was pursuing him to take his life, David had an opportunity to kill Saul. The king was alone in a cave, and David crept up and cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. David’s men were convinced God had delivered Saul into David’s hands so David could kill his enemy. But David was conscience stricken after cutting off a corner of Saul’s robe. He felt guilty. By showing Saul even that small token of disrespect, David felt he had sinned against God’s anointed king. He called out to Saul and confessed what he had done. Without any prompting from someone close to him, David’s conscience convicted him of sin.
Another time he was about to kill a man for being insolent, and the man’s wife, Abigail, came and pleaded with him to not do what he was about to do. God used an honest person to show David his sin before it went farther.
But another time, it took a major confrontation.
There is a note in our English Bible translations before verse one of Psalm 51:
“To the choirmaster. A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” That’s the setting for this great psalm of repentance. The background is found in II Samuel 11 and Nathan’s confrontation of David is found in II Samuel 12.
It’s a familiar story: David was at the high point of kingly success. He didn’t have to go out to war any more to fight Israel’s enemies. He sent his generals out to fight and he stayed at home in Jerusalem.
“It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the women. And one said, ‘Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ ” (II Samuel 11:2-3).
Uriah was one of David’s faithful friends. So this wasn’t the wife of a stranger. This was the wife of a man who loved David and had stood by him faithfully for many years.
“So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her….then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant” (II Samuel 11:4-5).
Oops. This is the kind of thing that causes national scandals. Think of a past president: “I did not have relations with that woman…” Or a prominent governor forced to confess his infidelity to his wife when the truth about his affair in Argentina came to light. The list goes on and on including prominent pastors and Christian leaders.
David knew this was the kind of scandal that could ruin a good career. So he did what any king or high profile person with power would do. He tried to cover it up. He brought Uriah home from battle, thinking he would spend a little time with his wife and everyone, including Uriah, would then think the baby was Uriah’s.
That didn’t work. So David arranged to have Uriah killed in battle. He had him placed in the hottest part of the battle and arranged for his fellow soldiers to pull back so the enemy would overwhelm him and kill him.
David didn’t take a sword and strike down Uriah with his own hands. But it was still murder. David just used enemy soldiers to do the killing for him.
When Uriah was dead, David would take the grieving widow to be his wife, which would appear to be a wonderful expression of love for Uriah. David would look like a faithful friend. And when Bathsheba bore a child, it would all look normal. That was David’s plan.
Displeasing the Lord
“But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD” (II Samuel 11:27b).
Why did it not displease David? He is called a “man after God’s own heart.” Read the psalms he wrote and you will see a man who clearly loved God deeply.
I have heard people say, David must not have been “saved” after all because someone who was saved would never do what he did. That strikes me as rather naïve. What Jeremiah says about the human heart applies to “saved” people as well as it applies to “unsaved” people: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV).
If you are honest about the sin that is still there in your heart, what David did shouldn’t surprise you. The seeds of all kinds of sin are there in our hearts, too.
The interesting thing in this story is that David seemed to be oblivious to his sin in this whole thing. Adultery, lies, cover up, plotting the death of a man who trusted and loved him, conspiring with friends to carry out murder – and there doesn’t seem to be a guilty conscience.
It helps to remember that we know only part of the story that God has chosen to reveal in Scripture. We’re not told that David felt guilty about any of this. That doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t have feelings of guilt or shame. What we do know is that David was not openly repentant. There was no public confession of sin. The truth was buried and ignored.
The amazing thing is that this story is told at all. If the men who wrote the Bible were writing a Jewish history for posterity or a document to convince people to believe what they believed, why not suppress this story? If they wrote the Bible to attract people to the God they believed in, why not just present David as a hero, a great statesman, a good king? After all, a “man after God’s heart” doesn’t do this kind of stuff.
David’s conscience didn’t seem to convict him. Those who knew what David had done (whoever helped him bring Bathsheba to his house) and those who obeyed David and made sure Uriah was killed didn’t come and talk to him about how wrong he had been to do what he did. David was the king. Kings do whatever they want. They’re above the laws that govern other people.
No, they’re not.
“And the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said, to him, ‘There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.’ Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, ‘As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.’
“Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man. Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife…’
“…David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the LORD.’ And Nathan said to David, ‘The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child who is born to you shall die’…” (II Samuel 12:1-13).
This is the background to Psalm 51. “To the choirmaster. A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”
Consequences of sin
He was blind to his offense against God until God confronted him with the truth. But that David was really a man after God’s heart is evident in the way he responded. You find no attempt to deny the truth, no attempts to excuse his behavior, no anger at Nathan for daring to speak so boldly to the king. You find a broken heart and more than that, a deep desire to be right with God.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment” (Psalm 51:1-4).
What words did David have in mind? What judgment was he referring to? He’s talking about the words God spoke to him through the prophet Nathan. God announced judgment: The child will die. The sword will not depart from your house.
Bathsheba was probably the daughter of a war hero named Eliam, who was the son of Ahithophel, who seems to have been unable to forgive David for what he had done. Ahithophel later counseled David’s son, Absalom, to defile his father’s wives. It also seems that many people in the nation were unable to forgive David and joined Absalom’s rebellion against David. We’ll come back to this in the next two chapters.
Have mercy on me, O God
To ask for mercy, honestly and sincerely, is to admit that you deserve something different from God than what you’re asking of him. You deserve nothing good from God. You deserve his wrath and displeasure. You deserve punishment because you have offended a good, loving and holy God who has treated you with kindness.
What had God done for David? He was a shepherd, a nobody, just one of the many sons of a man named Jesse. He was not the oldest or the greatest. But God raised him up and anointed him to be the future king of Israel to replace King Saul. God protected him for years as Saul tried to kill him. God gave him the kingdom. God gave him wives, children, wealth, victory in battle.
As he begins this prayer, David is keenly aware that he has repaid God’s goodness with contempt. How did God describe David’s sin? God said, “You have despised the word of the Lord….you have despised me….you have utterly scorned the Lord.”
Most of us don’t think of our sin in those terms. We say, “I made a poor choice.”
“I made a mistake.”
“I know it was wrong but…”
If God said David despised and utterly scorned him in the sinful choices he made, could the same thing be said of us when we sin? I don’t think David consciously chose to treat God with contempt. He didn’t think of his choices as scorning or despising God any more than we do when we sin. He loved God. But God’s evaluation of his behavior revealed heart attitudes that David didn’t see until God confronted him through Nathan.
David continues: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4).
He is not denying the fact that he had sinned against Uriah, against Bathsheba, and against the nation. He had hurt a lot of people by his sin. But ultimately, all sin is against God.
You can’t sin against your wife or your husband or your mother or father or child or friend without at the same time and in a deeper way sin against God.
Jesus said the greatest commandment is this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The second greatest commandment is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-38). You can’t break the second greatest commandment without breaking the great commandment at the same time. God made that other person you sinned against. God commands you to love them. When you failed to love your neighbor as yourself, you despised God’s commandment, devalued someone made in his image and likeness, and in doing all that, scorned God.
We will never confess our sins well, or repent well of our sins if we don’t see our sin for what it is at that level.
Honest confession
Suppose you have a “disagreement” with your wife, and you get angry. You think she’s being unfair. She’s exaggerating. She’s not giving you much credit. And out of you come some hurtful, cutting words.
Your conscience starts to bother you as you cool down. You work up the willingness to go to her and say, “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you. I used words that hurt you. I was wrong to let my anger be an excuse for hurting you. I’m sorry, would you help me understand how my words have impacted you?”
She hesitates to respond and looks at you with what you take to be suspicion, and you get a bit miffed about that. Here you are, doing the godly man thing. You humbled yourself and made yourself vulnerable, and she responded with a lack of trust.
It could be that prior experience has made her gun shy. What you took to be suspicion and lack of trust in your genuineness could be fear. Can she trust that if she tells you the truth about how you have impacted her, you won’t turn on her with more hurtful words or punish her in some way (maybe the silent treatment)?
Suppose she tells you the truth, like Nathan told David, and you hear it and feel convicted of your sin before God. What would confession and repentance in prayer look like or sound like?
How about this: “God, I confess that I was angry at my wife. I said some hurtful things to her. Please forgive me.” Is that sufficient? No, it’s too general. What about repenting of particular sins, particularly? How has your anger been sin against God? How have you despised God in the way you treated your wife?
This would be a good time to pray, “Search me, O God and know my heart.” What if you prayed something like this:
“God, I see the tip of the iceberg of my sin. I see the stuff above the surface of the water but I don’t see how big and how dangerous the iceberg is under the water. I see some of my sin, but I don’t know my own heart.
“In my anger, I feel justified, like I have good reasons for being angry. I feel justified in speaking out of anger when I feel wronged.
“But in my willingness to use words to hurt my wife, I have not valued the wife you gave me. I have not loved her as Jesus loved his bride. I have disregarded the gift you’ve given me – this woman you gave me to be my bride. In doing that, I have despised you. I have acted like you were unwise and not good in uniting me to her in marriage.”
Now that is a lot more particular. Would that kind of honest prayer change your concept of what it means to need God’s mercy and grace? If you think your sin is small and really not a big deal, you’ll never think you need mercy from God.
David said, “I need mercy. I need a thorough washing from my sin. I am guilty as charged. I need you, God, to cleanse me in a way I can’t cleanse myself. I know that I have done what is evil in your sight, so you are right to condemn me for my sin. But I plead for mercy.
Is confessing enough?
There is a big difference between admitting your sin, confessing it (even publicly), and repenting before God. You are well acquainted with public figures who have been forced to make a public confession of wrongdoing. Maybe you watched South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford confessing his sin on television. It was pretty good as far as confessions go. He said, “I have been unfaithful to my wife. I have been having an affair with a family friend from Argentina. What I have done has hurt a lot of people – my wife, my children, my family, and the State of South Carolina.” He was honest about what he had done.
But confessing sin and repenting of it are not exactly the same thing. One of my friends used to say, “I can’t tell if he’s confessing or bragging.” When you hear some public confessions, it’s hard to tell.
There is a biblical principle about confession that can be summarized like this: private sin should be confessed privately. But scandalous sin, public sin, should be confessed publicly. Sin should be acknowledged before those who have been hurt by the sin. But again, there is a difference between confession and biblical repentance.
There is therapeutic freedom that comes with admitting the wrong you have done. You feel relief when you honestly confess your failures and struggles and no longer have to hide. What you’ll often find is that when you get honest, people are willing to accept and forgive you. That is liberating. Confession can bring great relief.
Real repentance
But confession alone won’t change you. That’s not what biblical confession and repentance are about. Confession involves acknowledging sin and admitting you are guilty. No excuses. No defense of your behavior. No rationalizing what you have done. Confession involves telling the truth about your sin.
Repentance continues where confession has begun. Repentance requires a recognition of your need for mercy – you need God to do what you can’t do for yourself. You need God to cleanse and change your heart. Repentance involves pleading with him to do that. Repentance involves a deep desire to be right with God – caring more about how your sin has impacted him than about how it has hurt other people.
Certainly your sin affects other people, but ultimately it is against God. When God gives you the gospel grace of repentance, you care more about how your sin has affected God than you care about your reputation or what other people think of you.
The longer you walk with God, the more you will see the truth about the sin in your heart that produces sin in your thoughts, words and actions. At the same time, the gospel will become more beautiful. God’s love for you does not depend on your goodness. He knows your heart. He knows you intimately. Before a word is on your lips, he knows it completely. But he still chose to lavish grace on you. And it is his love that leads him to expose your sin in order to set you free.
Prayer is about intimacy with God, knowing and being known in a secure relationship of love. When you know God has provided a Savior and that Jesus has paid the debt for your sin in full, you are set free to be honest about your sin. Jesus carried your guilt and removed your shame when he died in your place on the cross.
When you go to God with confession, may he give you the grace of repentance.