S. The Blessedness of the Forgiven

THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE FORGIVEN

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” - Psalms 32:1-2.

THERE are here a privilege, a character, and a blessing. The privilege is that of “the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works” (Romans 4:6). The character is that which Jesus recognised and owned in Nathanael (John 1:47). The blessing attached to both is substantially the full peace and free access described in Romans 5:1. Thus, all the three Old Testament thoughts, of privilege, character, and blessing, receive a New Testament interpretation and application. But the Old Testament experience, as regards these thoughts, must be our guide and mould; for the psalm is an experimental one. The psalmist’s own experience is therefore all in all. And the psalmist being, without doubt, David himself, gives us all the benefit of it. He tells us plainly of the trial through which he has come.

He had been keeping silence; suppressing conviction; evading honest confession. It may have been some special sin about which he was thus practising reserve; or the reticence may have had reference to his spiritual state generally. The point is, that he has not been speaking to God about himself, or about something in himself fitted to cause uneasiness. There has been a shrinking from fair dealing with God, either about his state generally, or about a specific sin; and that implies guile; self-deception at least, if not wilful hypocrisy. He has been excusing or justifying himself. But he has not found rest. In very mercy God has not suffered him to find rest. His own conscience resents the attempt to impose on its veracity, and stifle its voice. And the Spirit, quickening his conscience, reproves and convicts him. He is so self-condemned that he cannot get rid of the sense of a more terrible condemnation: “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things” (1 John 3:20). He is constrained, graciously constrained, to try a more excellent way, the way of full, unreserved, and unqualified confession. Then comes the blessedness of a glad relief from his own conscious or half unconscious guile, and a calm, quiet sense of the Lord’s pardoning and justifying grace.

I. The privilege. Observe the successive steps in the description given by the psalmist, and by the apostle interpreting the psalmist, of the privilege conferred, or the grace bestowed, on the guileless man; and mark how completely, at every point, his case, as an awakened sinner, is met.

1. “Whose transgression is forgiven.” This assurance is fitted to relieve that awful sense of guilt, that terrible apprehension of merited wrath under which you labour when first your sin really finds you out. Your fond dream of impunity is broken. All your refuges of lies are overthrown. You dare not now plead that your offence is venial, or listen to the tempter’s soothing sophistry: “Ye shall not surely die.” You cannot any longer comfort yourself by reckoning upon a large measure of indulgence now, and an easy escape at last. You tremble at the thought of a judgment to come. The sentence of condemnation under which you lie prostrates you in the dust. It is felt to be real, inevitable, righteous. You cannot face your own accusing conscience; how much less can you face an angry God? You cannot forgive yourself Can you hope that God will forgive you? Can there be forgiveness with God for such sin as yours? for such a sinner as you? There may be much mercy for others, can there be any mercy for you, for you the guiltiest of the guilty, of sinners the chief? All the aggravations of your miserable state of mind toward God, your enmity against him, your rebellion against his holy law, rush upon your startled soul. The shifts and expedients of pains and penances, of prayers and alms, by means of which you have been trying to mitigate your anxiety and assuage your remorse, are become themselves grounds of alarm. The first thing you need is to believe in the forgiveness of sin. A free pardon, remitting the punishment, condoning the offence, must be put into your hand. The voice of him who has power on earth to forgive sin must reach your ear, your heart: “Son, daughter, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee.”

2. “Whose sin is covered.” Here another feature of your case, another element in your experience, is looked at; the sense, namely, not merely of the grievous guilt and just doom of your sin, but of its offensiveness, its loathsomeness, in the sight of the holy Lord God. For if your conviction of sin is genuine, and of a gracious godly sort, it works in you not fear only, but deepest shame. You shrink, not only from the uplifted rod of vengeance, but even still more from the pure and penetrating eye of him who wields it. You feel that holy eye looking upon you; looking into you; into your utmost soul; your heart of hearts; the very core of your nature: and seeing there nothing that can be truly pleasing to him: but much, very much, that must be infinitely distasteful.

“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5). Thou seest me, and thou must needs abhor me. Such is your dark dreary thought. And it is not relieved by the mere promise or word of pardon - thy sins be forgiven thee. It is not enough for you to be told that you are not to be called to account for what you have done, for what you are, and visited with the doom which you deserve. Absolution from guilt, the remission of its penalty, will not now suffice. For it is not your being under God’s wrath and curse, as exposing you to death, that chiefly vexes and grieves you. Nay, for that matter, you could almost be willing to accept the punishment of your sins. But that you should be yourselves, personally, objects of offence and abhorrence to him - having in you and about you, at the very best, so much of the abominable thing which he hates - that is what has become to you intolerable. Ah! then, how may you welcome the intimation, that there is not only forgiveness for your transgression, but a covering for your sin. And it is a covering which he himself provides for you through and in his Son, and which he himself puts on you by the power of his Spirit. It is a covering so complete that he sees in you no iniquity, no perverseness, any more; a covering so costly, so comely, so fair and lovely, that when he beholds you clothed with it, you are without spot in his eyes. He looks upon you now, and is infinitely well pleased; as well pleased in you as in him whose beauty clothes you; of whom he testifies, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

3. “To whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.” Here, again, another need of the truly and spiritually awakened soul is graciously and fully met and provided for. If your conscience is rightly exercised about your sin when it finds you out; if, under the Spirit’s work of conviction, the law of God is brought home to you in all its sovereign authority and searching spirituality; if it commends itself and approves itself to you as holy, and just, and good; if you delight in it after the inner man; if you are alive to its uncompromising and unchangeable character and claims; and if the commandment so conies that sin revives and you die; - then, no forgiveness of your transgression, no covering of your sin, will fully satisfy your anxious spirit, unless you see how your iniquity itself, your transgression, your sin bodily, as it were, can be dealt with, disposed of, got rid of, in terms of strictest law, demanding satisfaction and redress. You tell me that God is not to punish me for sin, for it is pardoned. You tell me that God no longer looks upon me with displeasure, as loathsome and offensive on account of sin, for it is covered. But there is the thing itself, the fact, the deed. It exists. It is a reality. And it is mine. I know and feel it to be mine. And I know and feel how the law requires that it should be treated; that I, whose it is, should be treated for its sake. Yes! And I hold with the law now in this very matter. I am on the law’s side. Because I am now loyal to the lawgiver; and just in proportion as I am loyal to the lawgiver, I am on the law’s side. I feel the need of justice being done. To have sin pardoned, to have it covered, may be all, so far, very well; but there it is; needing to be disposed of and dealt with. Yes, there it is, my sin, deserving punishment. And nothing but inflicted punishment can make it cease to be; make things to be as if it had never been. Such is the righteous, ineradicable instinct of my moral nature, quickened into exercise by the Holy Spirit. Such is the necessary and unalterable verdict of my awakened conscience. Hence the intense craving of earnest souls for penance or atonement.

Ye careless, heedless, godless sinners! You, in your carnal, worldly security, have no such feeling as that of which I speak! You can easily believe that God will not visit you for having sinned hitherto, and that he will wink or turn away his eye when you sin again. But let the Holy Ghost show you what sin is; what, under the government of a righteous God it must be held to be; as an act of rebellion against his righteous sovereignty, and a breach of his holy law. You will not then be so simply, or so easily, satisfied and set at rest. Look! See! What mean these priest-imposed or self-inflicted tortures, these bloody flagellations, these painful pilgrimages? Is it not the inherent instinct of justice blindly or madly seeking satisfaction? And thou, my brother! sin-smitten, heart-broken! art thou in darkness, in difficulty, for this very cause? Consulting now for thy God as well as for thyself; for his truth and right even more than for thine own safety, dost thou refuse the comfort of forgiveness because thou canst not imagine it possible that such sin as thine can be suffered to pass unpunished? Look! see! “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world!” The sin is thine no more; it is not imputed to thee. It is taken from off thee and laid on the great Sinbearer. It is not ignored. It is not overlooked. It is not treated as if it had no reality and no guilt. It is as a great fact, a terrible reality, laid upon the head of the Holy One of God. It is thine no more, because it is his. It is not spared. He in bearing it is not spared. In his person it is visited to the very uttermost. Wilt thou not be satisfied, doubter, now? Wilt thou not look on him whom thou hast pierced? Wilt thou not believe that God is just, when he is the Justifier of them that believe in Jesus?

4. For now we reach the crowning and comprehensive summary of the apostle: “to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works.” Righteousness; his own righteousness; the righteousness brought in by his own dear Son; the righteousness of his holy personality, as God-man; his perfect fulfilment of the law’s requirements, as the Father’s servant, on our account; his endurance of its sentence of penal death as made sin, made a curse for us; this righteousness is imputed to us, placed to our account. Not that it passes from him to us, but that we are in him and have it in him; and that without works, gratuitously, unconditionally, freely, and immediately. This takes in all, it explains all, - transgression pardoned, sin covered, iniquity not imputed. Pleading that righteousness, I humbly sue for pardon. Clothed in that righteousness I venture to present myself for acceptance in the beloved. Standing in that righteousness I see the guilt of my offences transferred from me to him, and the merit of his obedience, with the atoning virtue of his cross, made mine in him. So I am complete in Christ, in him as made sin for me, though he knew no sin, that I might be made the righteousness of God in him; he sin for me, I the righteousness of God in him.

II. Such being the nature of the privilege, it is not difficult to see how it is connected with, and indeed dependent upon the grace or qualification of a guileless spirit. The connection or dependence may be held to be indicated in Romans 10:3. They who miss or reject the righteousness of God; whether through ignorance or proud self will; either not understanding it, or not willing to humble themselves into acceptance of it; must needs go about to establish a righteousness of their own. That may be an easy enough affair with some, with many. Some good and kindly disposition of heart; some charitable deeds and acts of natural beneficence; an abstinence on principle from the vices of profligacy, profanity, and fraud; and a becoming conformity to the decenies of religious worship and ordinary social intercourse - may quiet conscience and give peace. In other instances, some stronger measures may be needed; measures reaching to the utmost depth of bodily or spiritual mortification.

Still, in either case, and all through any intermediate cases, there is guile in the spirit. There is unfair and untrue dealing. There is the putting of something else instead of what conscience testifies that God does and must inexorably require. You do not deal truly with God or with yourselves; with God’s authority and God’s law; with your own consciences and with your own hearts. You must establish some sort of righteousness of your own. You must have something to lean on and trust in when you have to face, however vaguely, the question of your relation to God, your standing in his sight, and your prospects under his government. Can it be anything that does not imply there being guile in your spirit? You must, in some way or other, be trying to beguile God. You are really and only beguiling yourselves. You are not looking God or yourselves full in the face. You are not looking in the face the real question at issue. You are evading the real point in debate; raising false or irrelevant pleas and issues.

It must be so. There must be this special pleading. And the essence of it is guile in your spirit, in your heart which is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Have you rest and quiet in that way of dealing with God; or rather in that way of escape from direct dealing with God? God forbid! Far better bones waxing old by your roaring all the day long; God’s hand day and night heavy upon you; your moisture turned into the drought of summer. Far better this worst anguish of a convinced conscience that can find no refuge or rest in guileful dealing with itself or with God. Far better that, than a conscience satisfied with formal homage and false peace.

Thank God, brother, if he does not suffer thee in that way to get ease from the disquietude. Let him break the silence, the sullen or angry silence, of thine unwillingness to be a debtor to his free and sovereign grace alone. Let him break the silence of thy secret longing to stand on some footing of thine own; the silence of thy self-justifying concealment and reserve. Come; let all be open and aboveboard between thee and thy God. Let there be no more anything about which there is silence between him and thee. On his part there is nothing. Why should there be anything on thy part? Guilt cannot now separate thee from him; no; not guilt of deepest die. Only guile can do so. And wherefore guile? Why should there be any more partial dealing with God? Why any refusal to be thoroughly reconciled to him? Why any continuing in the dark way of compromise when called to walk in the light as he is in the light; having fellowship with him and he with thee; the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleansing thee from all sin?

Mark here two things; the Lord’s dealing with one keeping silence; and the Lord’s dealing with one in whose spirit there is no guile. With one keeping silence God deals sharply and severely; if he deals with him graciously at all. He deals with him in the way both of inward conviction and of outward pressure from above. And the dealing may be protracted. It was so in this instance, in the case of David, if, as is probable, the Psalmist describes his experience under his grievous double sin in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. A full year must have elapsed before that double sin was brought home to him by the prophet Nathan. Was he at ease all that time? He was keeping silence. There was that upon his conscience which hindered all free utterance in communion with God. He may not have omitted outward acts and exercises of communion. He may have been all the more punctilious in their observance for his need of something to cover his heinous guilt, and ease his guilt-laden soul. But between him and his God personally there was silence; no real speech on either side; all dumb show. It was a sad state; and in mercy he was made to feel it to be so. It was doubly sad. His own frame and constitution made it so (Psalms 32:3). His very body was affected by the disquietude of his mind. It was as if a wearing out, constant, and chronic torture were eating away all his nervous strength and making him prematurely old. It is a moral and spiritual paralysis, or painful collapse of some sort, that is chiefly meant. The sense not of sin but of silence about sin, dissolves as to all spiritual purpose the whole inner man.

All the more, because, it carries with it and has in it, the sense unacknowledged but yet felt, of the righteous judgment of God (Psalms 32:4 first clause) David may have tried and tried hard, to take off that hand, or to get himself somehow extricated out of its grasp. You would fain do so when you are in the like case with his. You have to deal not only with your own inward misgivings and self-accusing recollections and regrets, enough of themselves to cause the waxing old of your bones through your roaring all the day long; but with the burden of the divine sentence of wrath, not only impending over you, but pressing upon you; weighing you down in spite of yourself to the lowest pit. In vain you strive to cast it from you; as you would cast from you in your relieved and glad awakening, some horrid, hellish, nightmare. It is no nightmare. It is a terrible reality. And you are made to feel that it is so; if it is a gracious dealing with you on the part of God. And it becomes a persistent perpetual feeling. Day and night his hand is heavy upon you. The business of the day, the quiet of the night, avail not for your rest. In vain you have recourse to the tumult of the world’s pursuits and pleasures. In vain you court the slumber of the world’s insensibility. God’s hand is heavy upon you. It is, no doubt, a painful discipline; drying up all your moisture; withering all your life; to be carrying about with you always and everywhere the sense of unconfessed, unforgiven, unforsaken sin; your own conscience convicting you in spite of all your efforts in the line of self-excuse and self-justification; and God’s heavy judgment sinking you down in conscious condemnation, in spite of all your attempts to evade it, or to brave it. But surely it is better than your being allowed to sleep on.

2. For mark the Lord’s manner of dealing with you when you are enabled, through grace, to break the spell of this miserable reserve and concealment and disguise, and come out naked and open, into the open presence of the Holy One. You have not been suffered to find peace in the way of keeping silence. Alas! too many find peace in that way - excusing themselves, soothing their consciences, explaining away, at least as applicable to themselves, the warnings of coming wrath. But it has not been so with you. You have been awakened. Your sin has found you out. Judgment has come upon you. And all your endeavours to obtain rest while keeping away from God, making the best of yourselves, have ended only in a deeper inward feeling of helpless guilt and sinfulness; and a more awful apprehension of inexorable and inevitable retribution. But now you try a more excellent way (Psalms 32:5). It is the way of the poor prodigal. And you find in it all that he found. The Father meets you as he met him. He sees you afar off, and runs to meet you. He is beforehand with you. He anticipates your confession. He does not wait for your acknowledgment of sin and your humiliation in his presence. “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.”

Yes, I will have done with the old miserable method of guile, compromise, evasion, dishonesty, in my dealing with God and his law, and his gospel; I will have done with all guile in dealing with myself, my conscience, my guilt, my sin. I am sick of that wretched game of shifts and expedients, as between my God and me. I am ashamed of it. I am weary of it. I have done with it. Long have I kept at it, and tried to make the best of it. But all that is over now. I must arise and go to my Father. Were my provision in the far country not the swine’s food to which its citizens would banish me, but the richest fare of their sumptuous tables, I could not be content, without a full explanation, a frank confession, a cordial reconciliation, a perfect, open, unreserved understanding between the Father and me, the guilty, guileful child - guilty still, but now guileful no more. And how dost thou receive me? “I said, I will confess my transgression unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” The harmony or correspondence between the state and the character must now be apparent. The state, implying on the part of God the most thorough and complete absolution; remission of the punishment, hiding of the pollution, expiating of the guilt. All that is on the Lord’s side. And the harmonising or corresponding action on our side is, what? What but the laying aside on our part of guile, and of what leads to guile, suspicion, distrust, dislike? The description here is one of complete peace. Peace on the part of God. How complete! What more could be asked? Peace on our part. How complete! What is required of us but the laying aside of guile? What but honest dealing? God is true in his dealing with us. “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.” Let us be true in dealing with him, “as the man in whose spirit there is no guile.”

III. The blessedness flowing from the state and character of the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works, and in whose spirit there is no guile. His state as justified and his character as guileless is described in the close of the Psalm. I select for application two particulars.

1. Thou art my hiding place (Psalms 32:7). Strange and startling change! But yesterday, sought a hiding place from thee. And now thou art thyself my hiding place. Fain would I have hidden myself, anywhere out of thy sight, I would have interposed anything between myself and thee - the trees of the garden; the very trees of thine own planting in the garden, meant for my hearing thy voice and having sweet communion with thee; the means and channels of thy grace; the proofs and pledges of thy love; the ordinances of thy house and table; I would use as a hiding place from thee, sheltering myself behind them. And if forced to quit them, I would conceal my nakedness by some miserable covering of fig-leaves; some rags of a righteousness of my own. Anyhow, by any means, I sought to hide myself from thee. Now, thou art my hiding place. What a change! And how is it to be explained? How, but by the removal of the burden of the guilt from the conscience and the spirit of guile from the heart! Thou art my hiding place! Thou who hast made provision for my transgression being forgiven, my sin covered, and my iniquity not imputed; thou who hast made me open, honest, sincere, guileless, in all my dealings with thee; putting to shame my hard thoughts of thee, my unworthy suspicions, my cold reserve, my questioning submission; thou who hast moved and brought me to have most frank and confidential converse with thyself on the very matters that might have kept us apart. Thou who now canst trust me because thou hast made me trust thee; thou art my hiding place. Yes; it is this mutual and reciprocal confidence that warrants and prompts the exclamation Thou art my hiding place. It is God’s gracious confidential dealing with me, and my guileless confidential dealing with him. There is no more anything in him against me; anything in his government, for there never was anything in his heart. And now there is no more anything in me, in my heart against him. Therefore there is no concealment, no guile in my spirit. Therefore also he is my hiding place. Surely this is blessedness, supreme blessedness.

2. “I will guide thee with mine eye” (Psalms 32:8). It is a most benignant, kindly, gracious mode of guidance. It is opposed to the guidance of mere force, or what tends toward the use of force; compulsion or constraint; violence or the threat of violence. It is such guidance as a favourite and faithful servant, or still better, a loved and loving child, can understand and appreciate. It is fatherly guidance apprehended by a filial heart. For if I have a son who loves and trusts me, because I love and trust him, I expect him to watch my countenance; not merely to wait for my express command; far less to brave the rude compulsion of my power; but to observe my very look; to take a hint from the glance of my eye. Does he see me, ever so faintly, hinting, by the slightest frown, my dislike, or suspicion, or doubt, of any path on which he is tempted to enter, any work or play in which he might otherwise have desired to engage? He waits not for positive prohibition. He demands no proof of express unlawfulness. Enough that his filial heart discerns, as if instinctively, a father’s anxious scruple. He asks no questions; he urges no arguments; he submits to the guidance of my eye. And he accepts that guidance in regard to what I would have him to do, as well as what I would have him to avoid. For he understands me. He is of my counsel; my intelligent and sympathising confidant. He perceives what my heart is bent on; and, without being forced or bidden, he is on the alert even to anticipate my wish.

Surely such a manner of guidance on the part of God is blessedness indeed for those who can apprehend and realise it. And who are they? Not those who are ever asking, Must I? May I? Must I forego this pleasure? - submit to this sacrifice? - undertake this toil and trouble? May I for once venture on this liberty? enter this gay hall of pleasure? allow myself in this doubtful thing? Ah! that is being really as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, who own only the guidance of bit and bridle. It is the spirit of bondage. But ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption by which you cry, Abba, Father. “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.” “Here am I, send me.” “Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?”