PSALM XXXII.

THE BITTERNESS OF SIN.

Sin is the one element in human experience that refuses to be ignored. Through superficial views of its nature or sheer indifference to the fact, we may come to say, like some in the Apostolic age, that we have no sin ( 1 John i, 8); but we gain nothing by this assertion of our ignorance or apathy. The well-known device of the ostrich does not save it from the weapon of the hunter, and the mere shutting of one's eyes to the reality of evil does not make it vanish, but delivers us all the more surely into its power. Sin, according to Seneca, is the "universal insanity." It is a dark and dismal nightshade casting a gloom over every department of human life. Grace may change the nature of a man, but nothing can change the nature of sin. Enemies may be reconciled, but enmity cannot, and sin is enmity.

Some of the details in Ps. xxxii. 5, as given in the Hebrew, are most suggestive —

My sin I began to make known, and mine iniquity

     have I not hid:

I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord;

And Thou — Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.

     [Selah.]

Like the entire psalm, it enumerates the steps by which the Psalmist rose into the blessedness of the forgiven state; and we may profitably analyse its teaching a little more in detail.

1. The Nature of Sin.

The expression "sin" is the first word in this Hebrew verse, and also the last, the musical addition " Selah " not being regarded as an integral part of the verse. It is placed in this position for the sake of emphasis; for, unlike Ps. vi., which never mentions the subject of sin at all, Ps. xxxii. introduces this topic as its leading and characteristic note. So strongly did some of the Masoretes feel this that they pointed the first word with an emphatic accent. They wished to represent to eye and ear what was already felt to be present in reality, that sin was the dominant idea in this psalm, and that both melody and syntax might justly be requisitioned to emphasise the truth.

And is this not the teaching of etymology? In this one verse no fewer than three Hebrew words are employed to designate moral evil. And while etymologically they are all figurative terms, transferred from the physical sphere to the ethical, they furnish in their combination a fairly exhaustive summary of the Bible doctrine of sin. Probably the most distinctive epithet is the term "transgression " or rebellion — a conception which traces sin to its fruitful source in the will of the individual. It is not simply the thought of lawlessness, in the sense of defection from a prescribed law; it is rather a voluntary act of self-assertion in opposition to the will of a superior. It is withdrawal from, or rebellion against, the Lawgiver (cf. Ps. li. 4). Beginning with this as its starting-point, the subsequent development of moral evil is not difficult to trace. It is iniquity. It is a course crooked and perverse; and, therefore, well chosen to denote the tortuous path of the rebel, who, instead of following the straight route for the attainment of man's chief end, wanders zigzag over the desert and never reaches his destined goal. This is the precise thought introduced by the third term, sin. It means that the slinger has failed to hit the mark, or the traveller to reach his destination; for, having begun wrong, he cannot end right, and the forsaker is himself forsaken. Obviously the man who could multiply these terms in order to depict his moral malady had no superficial views regarding its nature and influence. The disturbing presence of moral evil had invaded the sphere of the conscience.

Verses 3, 4, show how cutting a lash the conscience may become in driving home the truth of personal guilt. Everything seemed to go wrong. The heart was ill at ease. The concealment of the sin was well-nigh unbearable. The conscience was filled with a thousand thorns to prick and sting him. And as conscience is the voice of God, it never ceased to arraign him day and night before God's judgment bar. This was one of the ways in which the enormity of his sin had come home to roost. Conscience is the worm that never dies.

2. The Confession of Sin.

In verses 3, 4, as already noted, the Psalmist was forced to admit that if he foolishly kept silence regarding his sin, he was constrained to cry out because of his

misery —

"When I kept silence, my bones waxed old

Through my roaring all the day long."

The cry of misery, however, is not always the birth-throes of a deep and genuine confession. Many a sufferer cries out in anguish who has no intention of recognising the hand that smites him, or of admitting the essential justice of the visitation. Confession of sin is rendered possible only when the afflicted one is made to feel the depth of his demerit, and begins to acknowledge to himself or others the grievous character of his backsliding. And this is the exact meaning of the incipient imperfect which is here employed by the Psalmist — " My sin I began to make known" — the tense of the verb graphically representing the nascent confession in the very act of beginning. It had not as yet assumed the form of a direct appeal to Jehovah; for probably we ought to omit "unto Thee" with the Septuagint. The man had only reached the initial stage of his confession, as he tried to make plain to his own heart and conscience the peculiar heinousness of his sin. But the second stage speedily followed. The more he realised the presence of the foul intruder which had usurped his inmost being, the more he determined to drag it forth into the open, and expose it to the searching glance of Him who is of purer eyes than to behold evil. "I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord" — until now, as the gracious result, he bows in the felt presence of Jehovah, a guileless and transparent life: " Mine iniquity have I not hid." This is the true nature of confession. It includes the heart, the speech, and the life. It begins with a secret resolution in the soul, which, by and by, finds expression in a direct appeal to Jehovah; but the consequences of the completed action are continued into the present, and the Psalmist can speak of the blessedness of the man " in whose spirit there is no guile" (ver. 2).

Absolute sincerity, in other language, is the mark of all true confession. There must be no attempt to deceive either oneself or God. " If we say that we have no sin " we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins — if we come as the blind man came, and stand in the presence of the great Healer, like the prepared plate in the camera ready to receive the impress of heaven's light, the blessing of forgiveness is not withheld — " He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Such penitents are sincere. Their have no fold in their character. They are fervent and transparent in their prayer. Their singleness of aim is reflected in the ' urgency of their supplication. " Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile."

3* The Forgiveness of Sin.

"And Thou — Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin."

The student will note the aoristic use of the perfect and the emphasis impressed on the pronoun ^^Thou." They combine to enforce the truth that Jehovah was more willing to forgive the returning penitent than the man himself was to come and solicit the blessing. The Psalmist was reviewing the various steps in his confession — how behind the transparent attitude of his present was lying the verbal appeal which he had addressed to Jehovah, and behind the actual presentation of his prayer the initial resolution of the heart; and there at the beginning of it all, like heart answering heart in an inner sanctuary, the Divine response was granted to the silent appeal, and the penitent entered into the blessedness of the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. As in the teaching of the Pearl of Parables, the father had not waited for the verbal confession of the prodigal son. He beheld the lonely figure a great way off; and before a single word had fallen from his lips, the tears of an undying affection were falling upon his neck. "I said, "I Will confess. . . and Thou — Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin."

The nature of the forgiveness is fully set forth in verses 1, 2. If no fewer than three Hebrew terms were required to describe the sin, no fewer than three similar figures are necessary to depict the remedy. It is at once the lifting of a burden, the covering of a foul stain, and the cancelling of a debt. The burden is removed, as in Bunyan's immortal allegory; the stain is hidden out of sight, as by the love that covereth a multitude of sins; and the debt having been wiped out by the exercise of sovereign mercy, is no longer reckoned against the offender as a dreaded liability to punishment And as all this is described, at least in verse i, by the use of the Hebrew participle, we have a form of expression which is eloquent with meaning as to the origin and continuity of the forgiven state. The passive participle describes the subject as having the action continually exercised upon him. Blessed, then, is the man who abides in this state of forgiveness; for both in origin and result the two lines of development approach and coincide. What began as aorists in the completed acts of the past ("I said" . . . "thou forgavest") is continued as present perfects or passive participles into the spiritual conditions of the present; and the continuity of the one is reflected in the continuity of the other, like the blue of sea and sky in their unity.

4. The Blessedness of the Forgiven State,

Not even the sound of the raging flood shall be allowed to invade its sanctity. This, according to the brilliant emendation of Lagarde, is the meaning of verse 6 —

"For this let everyone that is godly pray unto Thee in the time of distress;

The sound of the flood of mighty waters shall not come nigh unto him."

We think of one like Jeremiah fleeing from the men of Anathoth in chap. xii. 1-5, Casting himself down in some remote spot overlooking the valley of the Jordan, he brooded, like Elijah under the juniper tree, on the violence by which he had been assailed, and questioned the ways and acts of Eternal Providence. But hark! wafted on the night wind came the noise of a foaming flood. The "swelling of Jordan," as in the floods of autumn, was sweeping in furious volume to the sea. And the far-off boom was enough to strike even a strong man with dismay. For was it not suggestive of something far more ominous and forbidding? What if that distant sound should give place to the dreaded reality? and the prophet, one day, had to pass through the dark flood itself? " If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how wilt thou contend with the horsemen? And if thou hast faltered and trembled even at the fords in summer, what wilt thou do in the autumn spates? "

It is only the man who is strong in the assurance of covenant mercy, who can give the answer of this psalm, that even the sound of the flood of mighty waters shall not come nigh unto him. Like the Accadian penitent he has said, "In the waters of the raging flood take his hand"; and now in the rapture of a Divine forgiveness, there is no sound to him save one — he is compassed about with " songs of deliverance " (ver. 7). No need for him to stop his ears with wax, like the Grecian sailors, that the siren voices of evil or the sound of the raging flood should not come nigh him! A Divine Orpheus is on board dispensing music in the night, and every other strain is drowned and lost in the rapture of that triumph song.

Nay, the man's fellowship with the Divine is something deeper still, and the finest of Bible imagery may well be chosen to express it. Not simply the reflection of sea and sky, however beautiful they are in their unity; and assuredly not the relation of a man to his beast, as so graphically depicted in verse 9; but that deeper and more spiritual communion of a father and son, as eye meets eye, and soul looks into soul, in an act of age-long, covenant love.

"I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go,

I will fix upon thee Mine eye"

Obviously, one may rightly speak of the blessedness of the forgiven state. It is free from alarms by night, encircled with song by day, and characterised by deep, spiritual communion while life lasts — in a word, compassed about by Divine mercy, as in verse 10; who would not seek to rise into the fulness of so rich an experience, and lose the bitterness, if not the consciousness, of sin, in the glad ascription of praise with which this penitential psalm concludes —

"Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous:

And shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart''

In conventional phrases, it may be, but with a deep, spiritual fervour that redeems and beautifies the whole, the songs that thrilled the Psalmist's heart are now to be caught up and chanted by the entire Church. For in this grand " Hallelujah Chorus " of exultant adoration and praise, the penitence of the pious in Israel is to be glorified.