“Have mercy on me O God, according to Your steadfast love; according to Your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.” Psalm 51:1.

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The Most Persistent

This has been the most persistent prayer in my life. This is mostly due to the fact that I recognize sinful intentions or acts daily in my heart, mind, and actions. I know that God’s mercy is the only reason I have breath. If you search the text of the Bible for the phrase “Have mercy on me,” (you can do this on the Bible app pretty easily I learned) you will find several times, whenever someone approached Jesus at all during his ministry, this was their plea. The mercy of God against us as sinners is our only hope. We need it moment by moment. Yet, we take it for granted. We feel it is owed to us.

The passage I directly relate to this prayer is one of my favorite parables of Jesus, maybe because it’s so easy to interpret, as the answer is given. It’s the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector found in Luke 18:9-14. We read the straight forward story and distinct difference between these two prayers. The pharisee is thanking God for all he himself does right. This is not inherently wrong to thank God for his blessings, yet he is praying as a display of his own righteousness, which really amounts to nothing. On the other hand, we see the tax collector (a despised officer of the state) unable to look up to heaven saying “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” This simple plea and confession, as the parable tells us, caused the man to go home justified. It finishes with these brilliant words of Jesus “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” v14. Our value comes from the mercy of God not only in our formation and creation, but also in His sustaining of our life moment by moment, and as a foundation for any hope for the future.

This prayer from psalm 51 when David committed an erroneous sin of adultery and murder, shows us along with the rest of Scripture, that we too are in the plight of David. We have all disobeyed God in something. The Bible tells us breaking even one command is as breaking them all. It’s a leveled position we find ourselves in. But God provided the ultimate Savior in Christ that is victorious over our rebellion when we place our trust in Him.

Praying this Scripture has been profound for me throughout life, not just the first time when I trusted in Christ, but as I continue to recognize how fully dependent on Him I am. I wanted to lay out a few goals of this prayer here.

Humility

The first is humility. This is my main goal in this prayer. I want to be rid of any pride in myself. All pride outside of Christ is misplaced. This prayer brings me back to reality. Humility is, to me, the most under discussed topic in all of Scripture in our modern day churches. It is the foundation of our faith, yet it is avoided as a focus. I think we pay the price in our communities and individual lives when we avoid consistent meditation on, and please for, humility. This is one verse/prayer that has helped me do that.

Peace

The second is peace. Romans 5 starts out with “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This justification we receive through God’s mercy, in the gift of faith, results in peace with God. This prayer is not re-justifying me. When God regenerates sinners, He is justifying their past, present, and future transgressions. His steadfast love for us means we have nothing to fear. God’s mercy drives out fear in this life and the life to come. It is steadfast and it will not abandon us. Romans 8:31 puts it “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, Who can be against us?” Nothing and no one. Verse 33-34 then references this justification with “It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?” When we pray for mercy, and the blotting out of our transgressions, we are receiving peace with the King. We trust His almighty power to guard us in whatever circumstance comes our way. This is not a peace that everything will be as I like, but that even the worst of circumstances I may find myself in, cannot take away this peace I have with Him.

Joy

The third effect of this prayer throughout my life has been joy. Later on in this Psalm, verses 14-15, David writes “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” When we receive the mercy of God, we receive the joy of communion with Him. These are shouts of joy. David is not without contrition of heart. He experiences sorrow and anguish over a continued need for this prayer due to the continued battle with sin. Yet, he responds to his deliverance from his guilt with joy.

The Gospel Truth

For those who have not trusted in Christ for salvation, I pray that you will see this need for mercy in your life. I pray that God will reveal this to you through the Bible by His Spirit, and that you will receive the peace and joy with a humble and grateful heart. The picture above was intentional. One of my favorite teachers described the punishment for our sins against God as if a dam wall had disintegrated and all of the water came rushing down towards you and I at once, and just before we were crushed, the ground broke before us and took all the water away as a picture of the weight of our sin and the relief of God’s mercy. In a much greater way, at the cross, Christ took the full cup of God’s wrath towards you and I. He drank every drop and turned the cup over and declared “It is finished.” Your guilt does not remain in Jesus. I pray you would not delay in coming to Christ, to break the ground before your feet, and receive the mercy of God for forgiveness of sins, whether for salvation or continued forgiveness.