^ This psalm has been selected by the Church for one of the " seven penitential psalms." It forms a part of the service of the synagogue on the great Day of Atonement. Yet it is almost as much jubilant as penitent. The writer, while very sensible of his sin, is still more sensible of the fact that his sin is pardoned. While his first words breathe content and gratitude, his last are a shout of rejoicing (ver. 10).^
' G. Rawlinson.
70 THE BEATITUDE OF FORGIVENESS
^ Ewald says : " The song is manifestly ancient, original throughout, evidencing a strong spirit. Hardly could the inner misery of a lacerated heart, together with the higher happiness of one again reconciled and healed, be described with more inward- ness, impressiveness, and power than here. The harder the struggle in his heart, so much more glorious is the victory, so much more limpid and joyous is the stream of the earnest word. The colour also of the language is Davidic, and there is no reason to doubt that it was sung after the transaction recorded in 2 Sam. xii."
I.
The Eeality of Forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a reality on God's part, because sin is a reality on our part. Forgiveness, or justification, is sometimes spoken of as "treating the sinner as though he had not, sinned." This, however, is but loose, figurative language. Forgiveness implies sin, disobedience to God's law. Therefore God is bound, as the RiRhteous One, to take account of sin. He must condemn or pardon it. And our Lord Himself speaks of forgiveness as a definite act. " Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee."
1. The Psalmist views sin under three aspects.
(1) First, he calls it transgression. In its literal sense this means separation, or rending apart, or departure, and so comes to express the notion of apostasy and rebellion. All sin is a departure from God. It is treacherous rebellion. That is to say, it has relation not only to a law, but to a Lawgiver. It is not merely a departure from what is right, it is treason against God. It not only breaks some impersonal ideal of duty, but it is an act of rebellion against a loving Will which is in definite relations to me. And so it assumes a far graver and more solemn aspect than when we think of it as being merely a breach of law, a traversing of duty, a crime against conscience, or society, or public opinion, or expediency, or some abstract idea of morality. It is all these, but it is something much worse than these. The inmost recesses of the ugliness and wickedness of the wicked and ugly thing is this, that it throws into disorder our relations to a living person, that it is rebellion against the Living God.
PSALM xxxii. I, 2 71
^ There is in man an instinct of revolt, an enemy of all law, a rebel which will stoop to no yoke, not even that of reason, duty, and wisdom. This element in us is the root of all sin — das radicale Bose of Kant. The independence which is the condition of individuality is at the same time the eternal temptation of the individual. That which makes us beings makes us also sinners. Sin is, then, in our very marrow, it circulates in us like the blood in our veins, it is mingled with all our substance. Or rather I am wrong : temptation is our natm'al state, but sin is not necessary. Sin consists in the voluntary confusion of the independence which is good with the independence which is bad ; it is caused by the half-indulgence granted to a first sophism. We shut our eyes to the beginnings of evil because they are small, and in this weakness is contained the germ of our defeat. Frincipiis ohsta — this maxim dutifully followed would preserve us from almost all our catas- trophes. We will have no other master but our caprice — that is to say, our evil self will have no God, and the foundation of our nature is seditious, impious, insolent, refractory, opposed to and contemptuous of all that tries to rule it, and therefore contrary to order, ungovernable and negative. It is this foundation which Christianity calls the natural man. But the savage which is within us, and constitutes the primitive stuff of us, must be disciplined and civilized in order to produce a man. And the man must be patiently cultivated to produce a wise man, and the wise man must be tested and tried if he is to become righteous. And the righteous man must have substituted the will of God for his individual will, if he is to become a saint.^
(2) Then another aspect of sin rises before the Psalmist's mind. This evil which he has done, which probably was the sin in the matter of Bathsheba, was not only rebellion against God, but it was, according to this text, in the second clause, " a sin," by which is meant literally missing an aim. So this word, in its pregnant meaning, corresponds with the signification of the ordinary New Testament word for sin, which also implies error, or missing that which ought to be the goal of our lives. That is to say, whilst the former word regarded the evil deed mainly in its relation to God, this word regards it mainly in its relation to ourselves, and that which before Him is rebellion — the assertion of our own individuality and our own will, and therefore in separation from His will — is, considered in reference to ourselves, fatally missing the mark to which our whole energy and effort ought to be 1 Amiel's Journal (trans, by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 164.