continued from previous post
Then the Psalmist skips through the three ways we sin: In thought—“he thinks up wickedness upon his bed.” In word: “The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful.” In deed: “He has left off acting wisely and doing good.” I find especially troubling the phrase “thinks up wickedness upon his bed.” It points to the fact that very often our sin is deliberate, well-considered, plotted out. We like to think of sin as just a minor slip up here and there, an inadvertent mistake. The Psalmist will have none of this. We human beings sin, and we do it intentionally, deliberately, and often without remorse.
Now there are Psalms that contrast the behavior of the righteous person and the unrighteous person. Psalm 1 is a good example; the Psalmist sketches out what the righteous are like, and then says, “the wicked are not so” and tells us how the wicked are different. But not Psalm 36. As Paul interprets it, all of us are in bondage to sin. The terrible things said in these first verses apply to all of us. That’s not an unfamiliar idea in the book of Psalms; Psalm 14, for example, tells us that God looks down at humanity and sees that “they have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.”
But you know, when we read the Psalms, when we pray the Psalms, and the words talk about sin and rebellion, the purpose is not to make grandiose theological pronouncements about original sin; the purpose is really to help us see into our own hearts. I can say that “all have gone astray,” but really the point that concerns me is that I have gone astray.
And to show me the truth of this, David doesn’t compare the wicked to the righteous. Rather he compares the wicked—that’s all of us—to God. That’s what happens in verse 5, where he abruptly stops talking about the wicked and turns his eyes to the Lord. “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, and your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the strong mountains; you save both man and beast, O God.”
David is saying that the rebellion, the wickedness, the sinfulness in our own hearts melts away in the face of the faithfulness of God. It may be that human beings are rebellious and sinful, that I very personally am rebellious and sinful—but God is faithful. It may be true that I am unrighteous, but God’s righteousness is like the mountains. I know full well that I am in bondage to sin and cannot save myself, but God saves both man and beast.
And that is grace, in its most eloquent and fundamental form. When the voice of rebellion stirs within us, then there is one place to take refuge, and that is under the shadow of God’s wings. When our strength is dried out and we don’t know where to turn, God gives us to drink from the river of his delights. When we stumble around in the darkness of our own sin, in God’s light we see light.
Then David concludes with a simple prayer, and an observation. “Let not the foot of the proud come near me.” I read that to mean something like, “Do not let my own pride keep me from you, O Lord. Do not let my own wickedness push me aside.” And he concludes with an admission that the wicked, those who do not turn to God, are cast down, fallen. It is, in a sense, a kind of prayer: Do not, O Lord, let that happen to me. Rather “continue your lovingkindness to me, and your favor.”
So we have it: an honest appraisal of the rebellious heart that beats within each of us; and a marvelous expression of God’s faithfulness, God’s mercy, which can forgive and strengthen and embrace even us rebels. That love takes its ultimate form in the cross, where that merciful God gives himself for us. I’ve always loved a hymn by Charles Wesley, not one, unfortunately, in the Lutheran repertoire, but I’ll share it with you:
O love divine, what hast thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father’s co-eternal Son
Bore all my sins upon the tree.
The immortal God for me hath died:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
Is crucified for me and you,
To bring us rebels back to God.
Believe, believe the record true,
Ye all are bought with Jesus’ blood.
Pardon for all flows from his side:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
by Richard O. Johnson, associate editor
Copyright 2006 ALPB