Psalm 32 begins with, “Happy [or, Blessed] are those whose transgression is forgiven.” We see this here and there in scripture and we know what to call it: beatitude, a pronouncement of what the good life, the happy life looks like. If you ask Psalm 32, the happy, blessed life is to experience forgiveness, to receive the good news that God is looking at you and seeing something other than the mistakes you’ve made. And this is nothing short of a miracle. The poet makes no mention whatsoever of, to use the apostle Paul’s word, works, performed in order to manufacture this forgiveness. It is simply in God’s nature to forgive. The God of Psalm 32 doesn’t have to be convinced to forgive. He already wants to. Forgiving our sins is his idea, not ours.
This is why Paul quotes this poem in Romans 4. The happy, blessed life of being forgiven and redeemed by Jesus, is nothing short of a miracle because it is what God has freely given to us, not what we manufactured for ourselves. In the same way that Abraham did not perform some work that convinces God to bless him with a family and a covenant, you and I do not convince Jesus to forgive and redeem us. It’s what Jesus already wanted to do. To Paul’s point throughout Romans, belonging to Jesus is not something that one faction of the Church has achieved through the correct religious system of works, at the expense of some other faction of the church that can’t get things right. Forgiveness is a miracle, and miracles don’t come from you and me.
Now, Psalm 32 does place some responsibility on us. While there is no work that manufactures the miracle of forgiveness, the poet does recall the anguish of keeping sin a secret and then the felt relief of finally confessing those sins. “While I kept silent, my body wasted away,” the poet says. “Day and night your hand was heavy upon me, LORD.” In the poet’s guilt over mistakes that he doesn’t want to admit to, he at least perceives that his distress is one and the same as the hand of God alerting him to what is in need of healing. And just as soon as sins are acknowledged and confessed out loud, there is the explosively joyful new experience of relief and forgiveness. The poem now radiates with “glad cries of deliverance.” God himself even chimes in with the promise of instruction and formation. God does not forgive just to ignore sin, but to transform us into people over whom sin has no power.
Church, we should be the happiest people on earth. The happy, blessed life is perfectly open to us. And the burden to enter into that life is not on our shoulders; it’s on Jesus’ shoulders and he already took care of it. God is looking at you and me right now and seeing a something other than our sin. He is seeing a people that he made and loves, whom he believes is worth his time to forgive and instruct and transform. Church, you and I are recipients of a miracle. Our sin doesn’t change that. Our efforts don’t change that, because it was God’s idea all along.
Church, let us take seriously the responsibility of confessing our sins to God and to one another. Find someone you trust and confide in them, and the joyful promise of Psalm 32 is that you’ll be glad you did. Let us also extend this forgiveness to one another, because who are we to receive a miracle and then not share it? Finally, let us take seriously our responsibility of being the happiest people on earth.
0 Comments