Psalm 51

After the 23rd Psalm, this one is probably the most famous, for every sinner can sympathize with David’s sentiment: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.” (vs 1)

I’m sure all of us have experienced the despair of sin, that special kind of frustration that can only come from realizing that we’re in a pit with no way to lift ourselves out. Paul articulated it well in Romans: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do; but what I hate, I do… For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (vs 15, 18, 24)

The fact is, we’re in a predicament we can’t fix. There is nothing we can do about our sinful nature. We can no more change it than a leopard can change his spots or a zebra his stripes. The only thing we can do is throw ourselves at God’s feet and cry out, “Create in me a pure heart, O God!” (vs 10)

The Hebrew word translated “create” in that verse is bara, the same word used in Genesis 1:1 to describe God’s creation of the world from nothing. When God approaches our heart, He encounters the same situation He found at the beginning of Genesis—”The earth was barren, with no form of life.” (Gen 1:2) And out of this nothingness, He created a world of order and beauty.

That is also the way He changes our hearts. Out of our sinful nothingness, He creates a pure heart. He doesn’t take what we have and “clean it up.” In our sinful condition, we are “barren, with no form of life.” The only prayer we have is the fact that God is a Creator who can create ex nihilo, from nothing.

You and I can’t create something from nothing, but God can. That’s why our only hope of redemption is in Him. He is the Creator, and He is the only Creator.