“While I kept my silence, my body wasted away
through my groaning all day long...
Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not hide my iniquity...
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
Selah
— PSALM
32:3, 5 (NRSV)
We have all kept the darkest
secrets only to find ourselves cursed because the darkness descended over us
and smothered all our light. The truth that regales through Psalm 32—the King of Israel, David, having
transgressed the house of Uriah and Bathsheba, having experienced forgiveness—is
the classic case of the blessings unveiled at the honest discharge of the guilt
of our sin.
The forgiveness of the guilt of
our sin is quite straightforward. We are the ones who complicate it, by hiding
the truth from God; or from others who can facilitate our forgiveness.
Of course, we know that we cannot
hide anything from God. But we still try it on. We still have our ‘Adam’
moments where it’s as if we are naked in the garden, and we try desperately to
look for a fig leaf in order to hide the evidence of our sin or make it that
the appearance of our sin is palatable to us, others and God.
It’s only when we have arrived at
the awareness to know that concealing the truth is benign to healing that we
have courage enough, perhaps, to plunge through the murkiness of the guilt of
our sin and reveal it for what it is. We are always best revealing it to
another person in the sight of God; a trusted, grace-and-Spirit-filled person
will suffice.
The Importance of Hearing the Words: The
Guilt of Our Sin
When we have come to the point of
knowing that we must confess our sin, and we also know that divulging our guilt
to another graceful other will help in our being released, we stand at the
precipice, ready to take the step and plunge from a confounding darkness into God’s
glorious light.
We imagine an image of bungee
jumping. We are terrified before we take the plunge, and on the way down we
wonder how it will end, and very suddenly we reach the bottom, and the cord
recoils before we know it.
Just the same, taking the step of
admitting the guilt of our sin seems horrendous, until we realise we had just
taken the step and no condemnation comes our way. Suddenly, as if reaching the
bottom of the bungee jump, we realise we are safe, and an incredible sense of
relief courses through our veins.
There is incredible importance in
hearing the words of our admission; the trembling voice; the stutters and
stammers; the anxiety on our lips.
***
The truth gives entrance to light
in the company of darkness, and the darkness gives way to the light instantly.
The guilt of sin loses its burden and the weight literally falls off having
confessed it within a grace-filled atmosphere. When we trust our darkness to
the light, the light frees us of the darkness.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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