“Apple trees bear apples, wheat stalks produce wheat, and forgiven people forgive people.” —Max Lucado
We started a study of Psalm 32 in our last lesson. David begins at the end of the story, when he revels in the blessedness of God’s forgiveness (vv 1-2). But then he talks about the toll unconfessed sin takes. “When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer” (vv 3-4). In the New Testament, the word confess means to name the sin, to call it what God calls it. “Guilty as charged, Your Honor.” So David wasn’t silent after all—he was groaning on the inside! And he knew where the pressure was from—the same hand that fed him, comforted him, trained him, loved him. We see that sin saps the soul, demanding all your energy just to go on pretending that everything is OK. The solution was both obvious and simple. “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin” (v 5). Notice that combination, “the iniquity of my sin.” The Lord declared Himself to be “the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Ex 34:6-7). Sin is falling short of the standard, transgression is going beyond the limit, but iniquity is a purposeful act of rebellion. David fell short, but it was no accident. He committed it, as they say, with malice aforethought. Not surprisingly, David’s joy in forgiveness after his distress in an unforgiven state (vv 3-4), and the solution to his problem in confession (v 5) are marked off by Selahs. The lesson is obvious. Better to stay out of sin’s quagmire in the first place than have to be pulled out. But we’re so thankful that God is ready to forgive.