The Desirable Truth of Our Innermost Being (2)
It wouldn’t
be Lent without our coming to terms with things like sin, and forgiveness, and
our need to confess and to repent - however we may interpret those to be.
Traditionally, most ‘religious’ people struggle even more with sin-consciousness
during Lent than any other time of the year. Of course, that’s how the
Church developed its ecclesiastical grip on the believers: from the
bait-and-switch of its perverted gospel to the preservation of power among the hierarchy,
and, consequently, the dogmatic dualism of perpetuating ‘professional’ and
‘amateur’ (‘Lay’) Christians. How else would you describe the terrible mess we
have been in for at least 1700 years?
I know
something of this, as I am a candidate for acceptance onto the training
programme for Licensed Lay Ministry in the Anglican (Church of England)
Communion. Even at a local, “Middle Church” parish level, the performance of a
professional priesthood, the dressing up, the insistence upon reading scripts -
such as the Book of Common Prayer, or Common Worship - and the
passivity of the ‘audience’ watching all the theatre of this dominical
dress-rehearsal for heaven is heart-breaking. Nevertheless, I am where I am
inspired to be by the grace of God, albeit counter-intuitively!
I hinted,
last time, at the possibility that we need to refocus from sin-consciousness
and the guilt and shame we have been conditioned to feel and express –
especially through certain morbid liturgical theologies – to a Son-consciousness
that operates at two levels: 1) the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, Himself, and,
2) our own ‘sonship’ in Christ.
So, then, to
the next stanza of Psalm 51.
Behold, I was
brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my
mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You
desire truth in the innermost being,
And in the
hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
7 Purify me
with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and
I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to
hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones
which You have broken [‘humbled’] rejoice.
9 Hide Your
face from my sins
And blot out
all my iniquities.
It is so distressing to hear and read the false gospel (that is a No-Gospel, according to Paul!) that has resulted from the widely copied, and repeated mistranslation of verse 5. Check these in Bible hub, but a few egregious examples include:
Surely, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. (NIV)
For I was born a sinner— yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. (NLT - shockingly)
I was brought forth in [a state of] wickedness; In sin my mother conceived me [and from my beginning I, too, was sinful]. (Amplified Bible - outrageous error and presumption!)
Look, I was guilty of sin from birth, a sinner the moment my mother conceived me. (NET)
Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. (Inexcusably egregious NRSV)
"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” Far from expressing ante-natal guilt, as several translators have chosen to imply, this line is basically saying: “Look, Father: I have come out of the womb into a serious sin situation here on earth: neither of my choosing, nor my doing! This was not my fault!” There are other examples, but in Jeremiah 1:5, God tells Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.” We saw in Psalm 139: 15-16, “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, skilfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in your book were all written the days ordained for me before there was yet a single one.”
As the Holy Spirit “brooded over the face of the void…” so God “saw us,”
as yet unformed. We were the thought of God before we were ‘skillfully
made in the depth of the earth – “in secret!” We have always been “very good”
and the “apple of My eye,” our names “written on the palm of My hand.” The truth
of our being depends not upon a theology and soteriology, dictated by chapter 3
of Genesis and its dogma of “Original Sin” – according to Augustine’s disastrous
deception – but of our “Original Blessing” as pronounced by God in Genesis 1: God
saw all that He had made, and behold [Look!] it was very good.
Though we in Adam certainly did turn away from God in disobedience and
disbelief, Christ was already slain as the Lamb of God, foreshadowed before the
foundation (‘Fall’) of the world! (See 1 Peter 1: 19-20) The major
issue, then, concerns our origin, and who we really are, made in the image and
likeness of God. This is to say, who we are, and how we
behave. The clue is in the next verse: Behold, You desire truth in the
innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. We
might, without presumption, re-write this as “Look, Your desire is in the truth
of my innermost being – my True Self – in You, and in this secret place of true
being, you will make known to me your Wisdom.” It is to this “inner
room/place” that Jesus encouraged us to go and pray: this secret place, where
the real me discovers the real God in me, a temple of the Holy Spirit. “Or
do you not know,” writes Paul to the Corinthian Church, “that your body is a
temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? And you
are not your own, for you have been bought with a price: therefore, glorify God
in your body.” (1 Cor. 6:19-20)
We come next, to verses 7 through 9. One thing about the Psalms that we
need to bear in mind is their transcendence in time. David, as a foreshadowing
of Christ, often writes prophetically in ways that have confused some readers.
There are many passages that apply equally to him, to Israel, and to Jesus the
Christ. And, clearly, there is a need for us to read them Christologically if
we are going to receive the full truth in them.
We know that in and through Christ, God was reconciling the world
– (Past, Present and for ever in the Future) to Himself. Moreover, we know that
the salvation and redemption of all of Creation (humankind, in particular)
obtained on the Cross, includes David, but also Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as
well as “Adam” and “Eve,” types of our original ancestry.
When we read verses 7 – 9, then, we can read “forward” to the Cross and
the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. This realisation totally
transformed my reading of this Psalm, shifting the focus from Sin-consciousness
to Son-consciousness. From begging and pleading for something already
finished in Christ, and in which I am included, I can n ow rejoice each
morning that I have been purified with hyssop [‘sprinkled’ with the
Blood (of Jesus) and thus made ‘clean,’ according to God’s declaration] and washed
in the water [by the Holy Spirit] and so declared whiter than
snow. (See, especially, Isaiah 1:18) Rather than pleading for
something God can’t give me – because He already did in Christ, on the
Cross – I can reaffirm my reconciled state, according to Scripture (both ‘Old’
and ‘New’ Testaments). What a way to start the day!
Then are we able to ask our heavenly Father: May you make me hear joy
and gladness [as I declare, aloud, your Grace and Goodness!], allowing the
bones [the very structure – ‘frame’ - of my body] that you have ‘broken’
[humbled] to rejoice. So, hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my
iniquities. We can be this bold – approach boldly the Throne of Grace, even!
(Hebrews 4:16)
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may
receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. And if ever we
- as a Church, and as a Body and Temple of God - were in need of re-discovering
God’s infinite Grace and mercy towards us, it is surely now.
Grace and
peace, Wayfarers – Go well.
EXTRA! EXTRA! From the
collection by Mercy Aiken who works with the Network of Evangelicals For The Middle East, and who co-wrote Yet in The Dark Streets
Shining – A Palestinian Story of Hope & Resilience in
Bethlehem with Bishara Awad.
"If we
keep remembering the wrongs which men have done us, we destroy the power of the
remembrance of God…" -- Abba Macarius the Great
Made me happy to see this sweet Acacia growing here, smelling just as sweet as
it does in the Sonoran desert.
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