Reliant on Mercy

Psalm 51:1-2

We saw the sins David committed in our previous article. Today we will begin our study on David’s response to his sin. This response is recorded in Scripture for all of us to read, dissect, and regurgitate so that we may know how we ought to respond to our sin.

David knows he has sinned. Nathan made it clear to him (2 Samuel 12:7) and he admitted to it (2 Samuel 12:13). David then cries out to God and prays for Him to be merciful. He knows he does not deserve God’s forgiveness and mercy, but he also recognizes that God is a loving and merciful God.

We read in verse one, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of your mercies, blot out my transgressions.” There is no claim of David to the faithfulness he had previously shown. There is no statement that he deserved a break. He knew he messed up, and his only hope of restoration was God’s mercy and love.

David asks that God blot out his transgressions. He was asking that God remove them from His mind, that He not hold his sins against him. This is not to say that he was asking God to not punish him for his sins (we see his acceptance of reaping what he sowed at the end of 2 Samuel 12), but, as we will dive deeper into later, he was asking that his fellowship with God be restored. David had been missing out on this fellowship with God for about a year while he failed to repent and it was something he desperately missed.

In verse two we see a continuation of this request. It states, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” David’s restoration relied on God’s mercy. He could not cleanse himself. He could not earn back fellowship with God by any good deeds. He was reliant on the mercies of God and on His lovingkindness.

This is how we need to react. We tend to believe that we can earn back our fellowship with God. We may not actually say it, but our actions show it. When we sin we need to get down on our knees, confess our sins, and ask God for mercy. We need to humble ourselves and admit we cannot earn His mercies. There is nothing we can do to earn back our relationship that we have broken. We are completely, wholly reliant on the mercy of God to restore our relationship with Him.

For years I would not accept God’s forgiveness. I would thank God for His forgiveness but deep down I had not accepted it. I did not realize it, but I thought I needed to earn it back. I thought that He partially forgave me, but I refused to believe that He had completely forgiven me. I mean how many times can you forgive someone who has proven time and time again to fall into the same sin? How many times is too many times? I acted like I had surpassed the number of times that God would forgive me fully without requiring a sacrifice on my end.

One day God showed me what I was doing. By not accepting His full forgiveness I was making God out to be less than He is. I was accepting the lies of the devil that I had sinned too many times for God to fully forgive me. I was, in my pride, acting as though I could have a say in how forgiving God is. The truth is, He forgives fully if we confess and repent. He does not hold our sins against us. He casts them as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), or in other words, He casts them an infinite distance away. There is no Bible verse that says He demands us to pay back for some of our sins. He always forgives fully!

It is a hard truth to wrap our minds around. No one else forgives completely when we hurt them as often as we hurt Him. But He is that forgiving! He is that merciful! He is that loving! Whenever you sin, confess and repent, and then thank Him that He is a God who fully forgives every single time. Don’t allow the devil to deceive you into thinking He isn’t as good as He says. He is! The devil wants to dampen and diminish God’s glory by any means necessary. He is the ultimate deceiver, and He is exceptional at subtly causing us to sin. Ignore his lies and bask in His glory, mercy, and forgiveness. He really is that merciful!

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