We come to part two now of our study in this precious portion of scripture. This prayer is what we call a lament in the Psalms. It is a window into the soul, revealing grief and deep mourning over sin, particularly King David's sin.

One German politician, Otto von Bismarck, said, "Fools say they learn from experience. I prefer to profit by others' experience." So here we have a kept record of lived experience that we ought to be challenged by, warned by, instructed by, and comforted by as well. There is a great light of God's grace shining from the pages of this prayer of David. It's dark setting, the context that we looked at last week can only make that gospel diamond shine all the brighter.

And so here in some ways we have David's version of what Paul will say in Romans: "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" And the answer, of course, is that God will deliver all who call upon him. This is the most amazing thing in all the world: that a holy God through Jesus Christ is now reconciled to sinful man. How good and how glorious our God is then. He is a God who saves; who grants eternal life to those under a just sentence of death.

You see, it was man's creational obligation to obey God, to love God, and man turned his own way. And so God reaches into the filth and he makes a promise of a full and free salvation; a cleansing and a blotting out of transgression. He promises his grace.

Meredith Kline, said it this way, to paraphrase: "The distinctive meaning of grace in its biblical usage is a divine response of favour and blessing in the face of human violation of our obligation."

For you see, as we noted last time, it is not as if grace is deserved from God. When David cries out for grace, it is not as if he deserves that grace. You see, grace is not a reward for the faithful. Rather, God's grace is a gift for the guilty.

So David pleading for grace to be shown him despite his sin knows that he is totally dependent on God's willingness to blot out his transgressions. Know how good God is. How great is the grace he possesses. How willing he is to shower upon sinners the gift of Jesus Christ and his shed blood to all who believe in his name. And we cannot even begin to truly appreciate this grace of God on this side of eternity. Our sinful hearts are still dull the reality of God's grace. We are not responsive to it as we ought to be, but we can know this grace now, just as David did when he heard the words of the prophet Nathan.

You see, Jesus, the resurrected and greatest son of David, says to us in our sin, as Nathan said to David, "You shall not die." For in love Christ says, "I have died in your place."

And so this morning I want you to see how this Psalm progresses beyond David's pleading for grace that we looked at last week. In these next four verses, we get an insight into David's confession of his sin to God. So I want to bring you a message I have entitled "True Confession."

What we essentially want to grasp this morning is a deeper understanding from this passage of the biblical doctrine of sin and confession of sin. You see, at stake here is actually our spiritual maturity in Christ. This is why these things matter. At stake is a true understanding of the gospel. Because if we do not understand the first thing about sin and what it means for man; what it means and what it says about God; if we do not understand its origins; if we do not understand its absolution in Christ; then really we know nothing at all about the Christian faith. So we must know these things. These are things we must know with great clarity so that our understanding of the gospel will shine through all the more brightly.

The Knowledge of Sin

First of all, here is David's confession to the knowledge of sin. See how he says in verse three, "For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me." What does it mean, do you think, to know one's sin? Is it like seeing something on the news that then you know about it? Is it like knowing, as in reading about something in a magazine and then you know about certain facts? Is that what it means to know one's sin?

What is apparent here is that there is much more force in this word "know" than perhaps older translations like the King James put it, where it uses the term "acknowledge." It will say, "For I acknowledge my transgressions." Well, really the underlying Hebrew term communicates much more than simply "acknowledged." It is a deep knowledge of sin.

David is saying something quite profoundly central to the believer's life concerning the knowledge of sin. So if you go and talk to anyone on the streets of Invercargill about the reality of sin, you might make progress in explaining how we are sinners, and perhaps they recall a time that they lied, and then through that they can understand something of sin. But will they truly know their sin in the sense that David is saying here?

You see, the reality of our sin nature is that sin actually blinds us to the true knowledge of our sin; and so they think nothing of it. People today in the world who do not know Christ are not walking around concerned about sin because they do not understand sin. William Shedd captured it this way, and he said: "The unsaved person, when pressed to repent of his sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, often beats back the kind of effort by a question like that which Pilate put to the infuriated Jews: 'What evil have I done?'"

What I am saying is this: that knowing one's sin is truly a uniquely Christian thing. It is something that in the truest sense only the Holy Spirit can produce in the life of a fallen son or daughter of Adam.

And so David expresses that he much more than remembers his sin; but relationally and experientially he knows that he has sinned against the everlasting, holy God. And so it causes a deep soul searching plight in David, and he expresses this in more detail in Psalm 32. He says that it was as if his "body was wasting away" and he was "groaning all day long", "For day and night your hand was heavy upon me," he says. "My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer."

This is what it means to know one's sin. The one thing you and I must understand is that this deep knowledge of personal sin, while we might think it is morbid in nature, is in fact the path to true freedom of conscience over sin. William Gurnall, the Puritan, said this: "Peace of conscience is nothing but the echo of pardoning mercy." To truly have peace in one's conscience we must know of the pardoning mercy of God. In other words, deep knowledge of how sinful we are is the gateway to know and experience God's pardoning mercy.

But then we can say in prayer, "Lord, I know this is what I am. I know that I am a sinner," and yet we can say, "Christ has shed his precious blood for me." So knowledge of our guilt becomes the freedom to understand the grace of God and all that he has done for us.

So the knowledge of sin and deep times of grief over the wretchedness of ourselves is not to be avoided in the Christian life so long as we always land upon Christ and his finished work, and we affirm with him, "It is finished." There is no more condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

But also see here that sin in the Christian life, sin in the Christian life will fester in the soul when not confessed. We churn and we suffer miserably until we come to God. You see, sin has this effect of dulling the conscience and it seduces our affections away from Christ.

And so David says here, "My sin was ever before me." It was always there. He could not get away from it. In the deep recesses of his conscience, he knew that what he had done with Bathsheba and what he had done to Bathsheba's husband Uriah; and all those who had been involved; and his covering over of his sin—it was always there, plaguing his conscience, festering in the soul.

I quoted John Piper last week and I will quote him again. He said, as I remember, "never silence your conscience." David tells us here he has a conscience for his sin and he can hold it in no longer. And so out comes Psalm 51; out comes this prayer of repentance. God turns up the volume on the agony of sin which is not brought to him until we cannot stand it any longer, and we must confess.

How sad it is when we cannot in prayer acknowledge that we are sinners. People think sin is too depressing a topic. "Can't we just get on with life? Can't we just talk about Jesus and forget about sin?" They say, "why do we have to drag our feet through a topic such as this?"

Well, the reason, which I have already made this point, is that by dwelling on one sin that in the gospel we can enjoy the goodness of God and his favour that comes to us despite our frame. So we must be wary of spiritual drift inherent to concealing and hiding away in the crevices knowledge of sin. As John Owen put it, he said, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you."

We must prioritise in our private Christian lives asking of the Spirit of God to show us; to unveil; to expose our sinful flaws and tendencies; our character deficiencies even of which lead us to sin; and ask that he would renew us and cleanse us. We pray that God would sanctify us and make us like Christ. This is what David is doing here, and it flows out of him. And I would say it flows out of him with a great many tears as well.

You know, we can actually deduce with a reasonable amount of confidence that David had not confessed his sin to God for at least nine months. When the prophet Nathan comes to David and confronts him, he is already speaking about a son that has been born. Bathsheba's pregnancy has come and gone. David has still not confessed his sin. He allowed it to fester and grow like poisoned mould upon his heart.

And what other sins did he commit while he was holding on to this one? That is what sin does. It multiplies. Unrepentant sin is like a cancer; it multiplies, it grows, it spreads. May God root out of us our sin, friends.

You see, the life of repentance is uniquely a Christian's. The question is: am I defining right now your Christian life, or have these things no part to play? Because if they have no part to play, that would be a great concern, for you do not yet understand the gospel and you do not understand sin.

The Offence of Sin

As a second heading here, I want you to see the offence of sin. Psalm 51 verse four says, "Against you, you only I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight."

Here it is worth asking the question: what is sin exactly?

Well, as R.C. Sproul once quipped, I remember seeing this as a teenager "Sin is no thing." In other words, sin is not like a substance. It is not something that exists in the ether somewhere that has physical properties that can be quantified and measured. Because you see, sin does not exist outside of the conscious, willing cosmic treason of moral creatures who defy the holy and everlasting God. Sin is action. Sin is motive. Sin is willing against the Creator.

Now David knows that what he has done is akin to cosmic treason, and so that is why he says here, against you God, against your being, against your person I have sinned. He knows the offence of sin because he knows that mankind is morally accountable to his Creator.

The offence of sin to God is further explained by its vertical rather than horizontal nature, expressed here. Understand this: that David has committed, obviously, sins against other people here—Bathsheba herself; Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. Those whom David had put Uriah in a place in the battlefield where he would likely die, he sinned against them. He sinned against himself. David's sin horizontally reaches many other people, and he has sinned against them. That is true.

But notice how David says, "Against you, God. Against you, I have sinned." Why is this? Why does he say this?

Well, it means that even if the whole world had said to David, "You are forgiven," it could offer his tormented soul no relief, for it is God whose law he has transgressed. And so it is to God he must confess his sin and from God he must seek the grace of forgiveness.

One thing that occurred to me about this, and perhaps it is just formulating in my mind more clearly right now, is how important it is for Christian parents to help their children understand this. Because what usually happens is that two kids begin to fight; there is screaming, there is kicking, there is punching; all of that goes on, and then things simmer down. And Christian parents will usually take the child that instigated it or whatever, and they will make them apologise to each other. But if nothing else is said, then all that the children have understood is the horizontal nature of sin. They have understood that, yes, we can do wrong things against each other and we need to apologise to each other, but this leaves out the vertical nature of transgression; that it is to God we must seek forgiveness from before that of man.

So here David says, "Against you, you only I have sinned." He must seek the grace and forgiveness of God first.

You see, in the sum of it all, sin is only sin because it is an offence against God. It is a vertical offence before it is a horizontal offence. And at the root of David's sin was rebellion against God and his law.

In our Christian lives, it is therefore our duty to confess our faults and failings and sin to God openly and without hesitation. And then we can experience afresh, again and again, the pardoning mercy in the gospel extended to us. First John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Praise God for the gospel.

The Result of Sin

The third heading I want to bring before you here is the result of sin. We read in the second half of verse four: "So that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge."

What is meant here is that because we are sinners, God's judgment is a righteous judgment. God is not wrong to pass judgment on humanity. That is what he is saying here. God is completely free and right to condemn sinners. There is no injustice that occurs in the world when someone is born, they live, they reject God their whole life, they die, and they are sentenced to hell. There is no injustice in this. God is fully vindicated.

You see, as was mentioned in our Bible study by someone this past Tuesday, the only place where true fairness exists is in hell. People who enjoy the new creation to come are not going to enter by their own merits. In fact, we will enter the new creation precisely because Jesus was treated unfairly in our place. We did not get what was fair when Jesus saved us and gave us the promise of everlasting life. For that to happen, something unfair had to happen.

The Apostle Paul quotes this very portion of Psalm 51:4 in Romans 3:4 to support his point there; that what God does, he is entirely vindicated in, and he does not need to answer to man. Therefore, no one, not David, not anyone, not me, not you can point the finger at God ever and say that is not fair. For God is justified when he speaks and blameless when he judges. The sinner has no stand.

And on that final day when the books are open and when the unsaved world stands before Christ on his great white throne, all guilt will be exposed. Every mouth will be silenced except for the groans and despair when it is realised that the perfect justice of God has been executed in their sentencing. So David says, God is blameless when he judges.

The Origin of Sin

Finally, a fourth heading to close on: here we want to consider the origin of sin. We have considered the knowledge of sin; the offence of sin; the result of sin; and now we have a statement on the origins of sin. He says in verse five, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me."

What David is saying here, first of all, is he is confessing to God that his actions—which have happened now in his past with Bathsheba and so on—occur as a consequence of his own fallen nature. He was acting in accordance with his nature; and thus he is confessing.

But what David is also giving us here is one of the key passages on what we call the biblical doctrine of original sin. Every Christian should understand and be able to explain the doctrine of original sin.

Here we go. It is not complicated. The doctrine of original sin teaches that since the fall of humanity in the garden, all humanity was condemned in that original sin that Adam was held accountable for. We all were condemned in Adam. That is it. And as a consequence, what this means is that our very nature from the womb to the grave is bent; pointed at; with a will conforming to sin, because we are already condemned in Adam's sin. And so by nature we sin.

In other words, just as when elections come around and you vote for a politician that represents your views, so to speak, so Adam represented us in creation. We are not, therefore, called sinners by the Bible because we commit sins. The Bible first calls us sinners because we are not born neutral. We sin because we are sinners by nature.

Okay? So we are not born in a neutral position. That little baby that is born is not an innocent child. They are born already under a sentence of death. They will need to be redeemed. They will need grace. We see this here. David says, "I was brought forth in iniquity." In other words, before David had consciousness; before he was speaking; before he even had any conscious thoughts, he was already in sin. His nature was already corrupted, and he was brought forth into the world like this. He is confessing to God that his sinful actions occurred as a consequence of the fact that his nature has fallen. He is not trying to cover it up, but he is bringing it to God. He is saying, "I sinned because I am a sinner."

And so notice here how he says also, "In sin my mother conceived me." This is by no means saying that somehow David's mother sinned when David was conceived. That is not what this is about. It is not like there was any adultery going on when he was conceived. No, that is not what he is saying here.

What he means is that even at conception, while David was still a foetus; while he grew in the womb; even then his nature was such that he would be born in sin. It is a difficult truth to accept, but the plain teaching of Scripture is that we are all born under a pre-existing sentence of death in our father Adam. And so hence, we need to be transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

Now perhaps you are unconvinced by this reasoning from Psalm 51. Perhaps you think that well, children are born innocent and then they are just corrupted by the world. Well, the even clearer text is in Romans 5. Take verse 12, for instance. Paul says, "Therefore, just as through one man (that is Adam), sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned." What does he mean there? Death spread to others beyond Adam and Eve because all sinned. In other words, because all were counted as sinners in Adam, death spread to all men. This is the teaching of original sin.

Let me explain it one more way before we close. I want you to imagine in the garden at the beginning, pre-fall, before the fall occurred. We do not know how long Adam and Eve lived in perfect communion with God in the garden. It could have actually been quite some time before the fall happened. Perfect, holy fellowship with God.

But you see, Adam and Eve were born in this condition. They were able to sin. God created Adam and Eve with the capacity to sin, but he also created them with the capacity not to sin as well.

Now the fall occurs. Now we come to post-fall, which is where we are. Now man has the capacity; still able to sin. Since the fall, unable not to sin. It is now part of our condition. It is built in. It is pre-programmed now. We are unable to not sin.

Now think of the reborn man; the person who has been born again, John chapter three, by the Spirit of God, has come to put their faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. What is their condition now? Still able to sin, as we do; but also now able to not sin. The Spirit of God within us, every time we sin as Christians, we are doing what we know is wrong, consciously. We are acting against the flesh. So not a one of us will live and not sin, but we do have this capacity—able to not sin. But we are also able to sin.

Now think of the glorified man. Christ has returned. The new creation has come. We shall enter into the heavenly state; the glorified state. What will be our condition then? Does it simply go back to how it was with Adam, who was able to sin and able not to sin? No. Then the whole cycle would just start again. What is coming in the future? Able to not sin and unable to sin. That will be our eternal existence. Unable to sin; no sin nature; sin no more. Original sin is something of the past.

Conclusion

Friends, I want you to understand that Jesus Christ is the great Redeemer. David prays, and he can pray in confidence and hope because the greater David was to come: the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ, unlike you and I, would be born not with a sin nature. He would be born holy and undefiled. The remarkable thing is that Jesus did not sin. He never gave in to the desires, to the temptation of sin, as we do. He had no sin of his own to know, but he took our sin upon himself. He had no sin against his Father; no vertical wrong; only perfect, holy communion. And yet he was made sin for us.

And now because of his work and what he has done, God can still be justified when he speaks of us. God is still totally just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. And he can say to you this morning—and you can believe it and trust in it and hope in it with full assurance—that our sins are no more. They are as far from the East from the West.

And the glorious truth is that he will one day place us in the new creation where we are able to not sin and unable to sin. And oh, for that day! Oh, for that day when this body of death is no more, and our inner corruption is gone, and we can fully live with our God and be with our God and enjoy him unhindered forever. Oh, for that day! And oh, praise the Lamb who was slain so that we might receive the adoption as sons.