The Blame Game

Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
Psalm 51:4




The Blame Game! We each and everyone one of us are good at it. Much of the time, we put the blame everywhere else but where it should be, on us. We further naturally do not see nor perceive that the shame and blame that we experience when we sin is against "none other" than God.

This truth is captured so remarkably in this confession of David's affair with Bathsheba. (2 Samuel 11-12) Certainly he had sinned not only against Bathsheba, but her husband Uriah, the military commander Joab, the Israelite army and the entire country of which he was king. How and why then could he confess: against You, God, and You alone, have I sinned? Because sin against our neighbors is at the same time sin against the Creator of all of them whom not only created them but placed them in our world for us to love and care for. In the end, we are answerable to Him.

Thus, David rightly declares that God is justified in that God is always in the right against sinful humanity and that sinful humanity is always in the wrong before a Holy God. God's judgment in the manner is always true and just and fair. The Apostle Paul quotes this very part of the verse in Romans 3:4 in support of God's faithfulness: "Let God be true though every one were a liar."

Thanks be to God though that this judgment of sin is not the final declaration for David or the rest of us in Psalm 51 (Law) but that there is abundant Gospel here for the absolution of sin against God, e.g. verse 1: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions" or verse 7: "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" or verses 9-10: "Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."

We know that such mercy, such love, such purging, washing and blotting out of sins is only accomplished and received by faith in the sacrificial death, resurrection, ascension and faith in this Good News of Jesus Christ. Such blessed restoration, renewal in the forgiveness of sin for restores the likes of sinful David to the God against whom the sin has been committed when confessed and believed to be sacrificed for in the name of the Son of David, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.