The Desirable Truth of Our Innermost Being (3)

 

With the realisation that we were not born defiled, depraved, guilty, or rejected by God, and with our time-adjusted lenses, we continue into the magic and mystery of Psalm 51: 10-13:

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
            And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

      11Do not cast me away from Your presence
            And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

      12Restore to me the joy of Your salvation
            And sustain me with a willing spirit.

      13Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
            And sinners will be converted to You.

This, I know, is such a sincere prayer for so many Christians – from basic ‘believers’ to dedicated disciples – all of whom are fully loved in the Father’s embrace. And to continue to pray these precious words, day after day, is to knead our hearts into that softness and malleability conducive to the Holy Spirit’s transforming actions within us. However, as we saw with verses 7-9, we can time-travel with these lines, too! Jesus Christ, whose Sacred Heart was broken for us, now indwells us through the Holy Spirit, so that “as He is in the world, so also are we,” (1 John 4:17). His death and resurrection changed everything, so that Who He is, we are also. And His heart is our heart, just as his mind is also ours. Metanoia, “repentance”, as we have seen, is about changing the way we think, and that includes the way we see and talk about ourselves.

It is fully permissible, and profitable for us, to re-read, and re-pray these verses in the context of the Cross, and the risen life we now enjoy in Christ. Thus:

 “You have created in me a clean [pure] heart, O God, and renewed an upright [steadfast, loyal] spirit in me [the faith of the Son of God!]. I am reassured that You will neither cast me from Your presence [reject me], nor take Your Holy Spirit from me. [“For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable,” Romans 11:29]. Restore to me [again, today] the joy of your salvation [healing, rescue, restoration] for [You] sustain me with a willing [engaged, eager, obedient, surrendered] spirit so that I may be able to teach transgressors Your ways and sinners [the god-less] will return to You.”

                                                         (Return of the Prodigal Son - Rembrandt)

In The Inner Voice of Love (Doubleday, 1998), Henri Nouwen speaks of our need for honest self-awareness, avoiding self-rejection. Knowing I am pure in heart secures me in my Father’s affection and the truth of my being. So, as far as “teaching transgressors [God’s] ways…” is concerned, Nouwen asserts, “The more you come to know yourself – spirit, mind, and body – as truly loved, the freer you will be to proclaim the good news. That is the freedom of the children of God.” (from Know Yourself as Truly Loved, op cit. p 75 my emphasis).

As much as our earnest (sometimes desperate) desire is for a ‘clean,’ or pure, heart – and understandable as that is, in the context of the “no-gospel” we have heard preached and expounded (erroneously) for so, so long - the Truth is that Christ in us is our hope and our glory – now… and in the Age to come. Yes, again we find ourselves in that “now, and not yet” phase; nevertheless, the work of Jesus the Christ on the cross was – and is - a completed work, of which Jesus Himself declared, triumphantly, “It is finished!”

This “now, and not yet” reality is seen in verses like Hebrews 10:14 “For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.” Or, in 1 John 3: 2-3, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears [Parousia], we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope on Him purifies themselves, just as He is pure.” In the same way we have been able to time-travel our verses in Psalm 51, so also are we able to with these verses. There is a simultaneous sense in the way the Greek tenses work here. According to Robin Smit, in her book It is Finished (TWS, 2023), “Please don’t read these words being sanctified [Hebrews 10:14, above] as progressive sanctification! He [the writer] is not saying that you are not already sanctified. The verb in Greek is in a present participle tense. It is describing an action thought to be simultaneous with the main verb, perfected.”  

“God’s logic,” she continues later, “is that we were co-crucified, co-buried, co-resurrected, co-united, and that we co-live in Christ. And then He by Grace causes us to have the revelation of that logic, and we begin to see ourselves differently. And then we know that we have been freed from sin and death, and we are free to live here on earth in full redemption, whole, in every area of our lives!”

Living this new life depends simply upon us agreeing with the Word (Jesus) that we have received, and in faithful obedience, being who God says He has enabled us to be! George MacDonald, in his Unspoken Sermons 2 (pp 126-27) writes, ‘“As many as received him, to them he gave the power [empowered; enabled] to become the sons of God.” He does not make them the sons of God, but he gives them power to become the sons of God: in choosing and obeying the truth, man [sic] becomes the true son of the Father of lights.’  Furthermore, MacDonald writes, “When a man wills that his being be conformed to the being of his origin…thus receiving God, he becomes in the act, a partaker of the divine nature [see 2 Peter 1:4], a true son of the living God, and an heir of all he possesses: by the obedience of a son, he receives into himself the very life of the Father.” (Unspoken Sermons 2, pp153-54 – emphasis mine).

“Blessed are the pure in heart,” said Jesus, “for they shall see God.” Our very faith (which is, actually, Jesus’ - and his gift to us) depends not on how much we can do, but on how much God has done in Christ Jesus. We really need (for our sakes, and for the world around us) to change our mind about ourselves. In lies we believe about GOD, (Simon & Shuster, UK, 2017) Paul Young (author of The Shack) writes, “I am fundamentally good because I am created ‘in Christ’ as an expression of God, an image bearer, imago dei (see Ephesians 2:10). This identity and goodness is truer about us than any of the damage that was done to us or by us.

               God doesn’t have a low view of humanity because God knows the truth about us. [Remember, Psalm 51:6 in our reviewed translation, last time – Your desire is the Truth of my innermost being…] God is not fooled by all the lies we have told ourselves and each other. Jesus is the truth about who we are – fully human, fully alive.” 

                                                                  (Smoke image -Unsplash)

Effective evangelism can only be truly experienced when the true Gospel is preached and lived by people wholly secure in the Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and where, far more than words, it is our very fragrance of Christ* that evokes questioning, sincere conversation, and genuine conversion.

*But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life… (2 Corinthians, 2:14-16a)

Go well, Wayfarers. We will wrap up Psalm 51, next time, and then head to Psalm 103 and an overview of how praying Psalm 103 > 51 > 139, in that order, and on a daily basis, has brought refreshing transformation into my life, and may be a guideline for you , too, should you need one!

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.

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness and speak kindly to her. "Then I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope. And she will sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.… Hosea 2:14-15 (with Adrianna Ekailan)