Sin And Forgiveness In The Psalms

A few years ago a garbage collector’s strike in New York City became not only an unsightly embarrassment but also a health hazard. Garbage was heaped upon garbage, and no one would remove it.

Nauseating, isn’t it? This is how God sees our sin.

But is that it? Are we condemned to have our sins ever piled before God so that they are all he ever sees in us? In the Psalms we see that God hates the garbage of sin, but we also see that God can do something about it. It’s called forgiveness.

Here are some passages from the Psalms that speak of sin and forgiveness:

SIN

Psalm 102:4

My heart is sick, withered like grass,

and I have lost my appetite.

Psalm 38:4

My guilt overwhelms me—

it is a burden too heavy to bear.

Psalm 32:3

When I refused to confess my sin,

I was weak and miserable.

Psalm 51:4

Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;

I have done what is evil in your sight.

Psalm 51:8

Oh, give me back my joy again.

FORGIVENESS

Psalm 103:3

He forgives all my sins

and heals all my diseases.

Psalm 103:12

He has removed our rebellious acts

as far away from us as the east is from the west.

Psalm 32:1-2

Oh, what joy for those whose rebellion is forgiven,

whose sin is put out of sight!

Yes, what joy for those whose record the LORD has cleared of sin,

whose lives are lived in complete honesty!

Three different Hebrew words are used to describe sin in Psalm 32:1-2: (1) pesha, meaning rebellion or mutiny against God; (2) hataah, meaning a missing of the mark, as when an arrow falls short of its target; and (3) avon, meaning a curving from God’s path, which makes us twisted ourselves.

Three other Hebrew words are used for God’s forgiveness: (1) nasa, meaning our sin taken away like garbage; (2) kasah, meaning our sin is covered, atoned for by the blood of the Lamb; and (3) hashav, meaning our sin is no longer charged against us—our record is cleared and the bill is paid in full.

By using three different ways to express sin and three ways to express forgiveness for those sins, the psalmist makes it clear that all sins can be removed by the Lord. There is nothing—no rebellion, no shortcoming, no perversion of his ways—that cannot be forgiven.

And this sin pervades the heart of each of one of us. A columnist for The Times of London regularly concluded his columns by asking the question “What’s wrong with the world?” After reading several such entries, the famous British author G. K. Chesterton wrote a letter to the editor:

Dear Editor:

What’s wrong with the world?

I am.

Faithfully yours,

G. K. Chesterton

That’s what the psalmist concluded, too. Before reading very far in the Psalms, you discover that sin pervades not only heathen nations and David’s foes in Israel but also David the king himself—yes, even this one whom God called “a man after [my] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). Yet, as we have seen, there is also forgiveness.

The noted psychiatrist Karl Menninger once said that if he could convince the patients in his psychiatric hospital that their sins were forgiven, three-fourths of them could walk out the next day. He knew how sin can shackle people, and he knew that forgiveness was the answer.

So when God says that he has removed our rebellious acts “as far away . . . as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12), you’d better believe it.

No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in him, is mine!

Alive in him, my living head, and clothed in righteousness divine,

Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own.

Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

CHARLES WESLEY