"To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 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.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar."
Psalm 51
To 'confess' (3ff) means 'to say the same thing as', that is, it is to call sin what God calls it, and to call it by its proper name. The Psalmist has already been doing so in 1, 2 in the words he has used to describe his sin, and he continues to do so in 3ff. This is a basic first step for all who would be right with God - and a biggish one, for the temptation is to excuse oneself, to blame circumstance, background, heredity or whatever for what we have done - 'I did it, but...'. The seriousness of the Psalmist's sin lay in the fact that it reached God: it was against Bathsheba, yes, and Urriah, against his own soul and body, and family, and kingdom, and the Church of God, but most of all and truest of all it was against God. This is the seriousness of it. It is this solemn fact that precludes any possibility of 'putting things right' by the promise of 'doing better next time'; no ethical or human means can heal this injury: nothing but the Divine mercy can answer it. Further self disclosure follows in 5, 6, in the realisation that acts of sin spring from a sinful nature. The derived sinful bias in human nature is a fact, and with this comes the realisation: 'it could happen again, David'. This discovery leads to another - that God wants not only correctness of outward demeanour, but heart purity and holiness (6). Hence the radical, and very moving, prayer in 7ff for forgiveness, repeating and underlining - and indeed intensifying - the earlier cry in 1, 2. This is indeed a cry 'out of the depths' (Psalm 130:1). And what follows goes even deeper, and is indeed the crux of the Psalm: if sin is nature as well as act, then not only must the act be pardoned but also the nature must be changed. It is regeneration that is needed. It is so easy to pray for forgiveness outwith the context of spiritual renewal, but there can be no forgiveness except we are made new creatures in Christ.