Year 5, Day 196: Psalm 51

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Evangelism, Forgiveness

• Forgiveness: Forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God.  We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway.  We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway.  As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others.  In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
• Evangelist: One who looks for opportunities to proclaim the truth and is excited by it. The evangelist specializes in interacting with the world and reminding Christians that there are non-Christians in the world.  An evangelist is not timid about the faith and is often found have discussions with other people about the faith.

Psalm 51 is one of my favorite psalms.  It has a very famous worship song that has its words taken directly out of the middle of this psalm.  Psalm 51:16-17 is incredibly inspirational for my own personal faith walk.  When you add to this that the psalm is written by David as he is in the midst of the turmoil following the Bathsheba incident the psalm takes on a whole new meaning.

This is why this psalm has such an overtone of forgiveness.  David has just had a man killed.  He took his wife – and added her to his growing harem.  And then Nathan catches him and brings God’s judgment upon him.

We know that David is a man after God’s own heart.  we know this because of what David says here in this psalm.  He is humble.  He confesses his mistake.  He comes before God and asks for forgiveness.  His heart is contrite.  God forgives.  As egregious as David’s sin was, God forgives!  That is the nature of God.  He knows we will fail Him and we will choose horribly in some seasons of our life.  But He is a forgiving God!  As David says in this psalm, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

But what I really love about this psalm is that it inherently connects the concepts of forgiveness and evangelism.  David tells God that when he has been forgiven that he will tell the nations about what God has done.  What an incredible revelation!  Our sinfulness can speak volumes into the lives of others with respect to God’s love.  After all, if God can forgive me in my sin, then certainly He can forgive you in your sin!  When we are forgiven, we should inherently desire to sing the praise of the one who forgave us – especially God!  Forgiveness should lead into evangelism!

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