I Plead for Grace (Psalm 51): Notes and Discussion

Below are links and doctrinal notes for the psalm I Plead for Grace by Joe Tyrpak. Feel free to chime in with comments or questions.

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LINKS FOR I PLEAD FOR GRACE (PSALM 51)

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DOCTRINAL NOTES

Because God delights in worship that is biblical, thoughtful and passionate—what we often call intentional—please consider the following overview of the biblical texts and doctrinal themes behind the psalm I Plead for Grace:

The best known “Penitential Psalm” (or “Psalm of Confession”) was penned by David, a deeply stained adulterer, murderer, and hypocrite. Psalm 51 records his confession, a God-breathed song intended for all of God’s people. By birth, all of us are deeply stained sinners in need of heart cleansing. Even after we are justified before God on the basis of repentant faith, we often stray into sin (like David) and need to restore our fellowship with our Father through this kind of repentant pleading.

Verse 1. David cast himself wholly on God’s faithful, loyal, covenant-keeping love. He asked God to completely cleanse him from every stain of sin in full realization of his shamefulness, his direct offensiveness to God, and his personal guilt. As God’s children, every time we repent of our sins, we should come to God in the same way.

Verse 2. In Psalm 51:5, David was not saying that his mother was involved in sin when he was conceived. Instead, he was saying that he had been a sinner ever since his conception. Like him, we are born sinners, and our indwelling sin runs contrary to God’s desires for a totally pure heart! David knew that the only way he could be inwardly pure before God was through a substitutionary sacrifice. “Purge me with hyssop” points to this. A hyssop branch was used to sprinkle the blood of a sacrificial lamb over the object that needed cleansing (Exodus 12:22; Hebrews 9:19). Every Old Testament sacrifice ultimately pointed ahead to the one and only Sacrifice that could actually take away sins and all of their internal stains.

Verse 3. David feared that God would possibly deal with him like He had dealt with Saul—by removing both His calling to kingship and His empowering Spirit. Although we are assured that “the Holy Spirit is the downpayment of our inheritance,” that “God will never leave us nor forsake us” and that “nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ,” we should still have the same fear and prayer as David: “Lord, don’t let my sin result in a permanent loss of spiritual power and ministry effectiveness.”

Verse 4. David prayed for the direct removal of his greatest guilt, his treacherous murder of Uriah, one of his most loyal and valiant soldiers. David longed to experience complete forgiveness so that he could praise God for His righteousness! This appears most awkward: it seems that only by unrighteousness could God let David “get away with murder” (see my notes on the sixth verse). However, David’s concept of cleansing was directly related to blood sacrifice—not just any sacrifice, but one that was offered by a genuinely broken, repentant sinner.

Verse 5. Although this pair of verses is challenging to interpret (many conservative scholars believe they were added to David’s original song under inspiration during the post-exilic rebuilding of Jerusalem), it is clear that the psalmist, deeply aware of personal sin and its devastating consequences, was praying that God would still advance His kingdom and still take delight in the corporate worship of His people. Thus, this metrical version focuses on our desire that God’s blessing on His work would not be forfeited by our sin.

Verse 6. Seemingly very few people in our culture struggle with “the problem of forgiveness.” Everyone seems to assume that God can simply forgive sinners without a thought. No one seems to wrestle with the apparent injustice of God in forgiving criminals in His court. However, if you put yourself in the shoes of Uriah’s parents you may feel that simply “letting a criminal off the hook” is unjust. How could God simply “pass over” David’s sins? Romans 3:21-26, often called “the greatest paragraph in the Bible,” provides the answer—God did not simply overlook David’s sins, or anyone else’s. Rather, at the cross God proved His past, present, and future justice in declaring unrighteous sinners to be righteous in His sight by faith. Essentially, God could only forgive David because David’s offspring, the Lord Jesus, would die for his sins. Similarly, our criminal sentence fell fully on Jesus who exhausted God’s perfect, just, punitive wrath.

(The notes for I Plead for Grace were written by Joe Tyrpak.)

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