The young woman was distraught. She sobbed, "I’ll never be able to forgive myself and get back to where I was before I did all this." She was a fine young Christian woman, raised in a devout Christian Reformed home. She had gone to church, Catechism, Christian school, and a Christian college. She was a faithful member at church, she and her husband. They had been married several years when things began to go bad for them. Gradually they grew apart, until there was very little left in the marriage for her. That’s why, when a man at work began to get friendly, she was vulnerable to the affair she was now confessing.
She felt trapped. She couldn’t imagine going back to her husband because in her eyes the marriage had been such a disaster. But she knew that what she was doing was absolutely wrong, contrary not only to the way she was raised, but also to everything she believed with all her heart. She felt as though she had ruined her life, but she didn’t know what to do next. That’s when she said, "I’ll never be able to forgive myself and get back to where I was before I did all this."
There is an ancient but still fresh Easter hymn that sings, "Tis the spring of souls today! Christ has burst his prison, and from three days sleep in death like the sun has risen. All the winter of our sins, long and dark is flying; welcome now the light of Christ, give him praise undying." This young woman knew nothing of the joy of that Easter freedom. It was not the spring of her soul, because she was frozen in the winter of her sin, as the hymn put it, completely stuck in great gritty drifts of guilt. It was the bleak mid—winter of her young life.
I wonder how many of us are caught in the same miserable season. Perhaps it’s not adultery. Maybe we are stuck with the memory of sins we’ve committed as parents, or more accurately the memory of sins of omission. As we raised our children, there were things we didn’t do right and our omissions permanently damaged their lives. Or perhaps we’re frozen in place by a life of missed opportunity because of dependence on alcohol or drugs. Or maybe it’s a string of lies that finally broke the trust of a parent or a friend. I wonder how many of us live with deep regrets, unresolved guilt, secret sorrow, continued habitual sins feeling as though we’ve ruined our lives and unable to forgive ourselves. So whether it’s January or April or July or October, we never quite escape the bleak mid—winter of our souls.
Well, in Psalm 51 we find another promise for the bleak mid—winter. "Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow." That was the sure faith of a man whose heart was as black with guilt as his hands were red with blood. But he had discovered that it is possible to get your life back, to once again enjoy the springtime of your soul. In the rest of Psalm 51 David piles up phrases to describe how fresh and clean life can be when you are washed whiter than snow. Your ears are filled with joy and your broken bones rejoice, your heart is pure and your spirit steadfast, your sense of God’s presence is vivid and you know the Holy Spirit is within. In a word, you are filled with the joy of salvation. If God washes you, you can be whiter than snow, and start life over again. That is today’s promise for the bleak mid—winter.
We all know that promise. But it seems, to many of us, that it doesn’t really work that way. I mean that we have confessed our sins until we are blue in the face. We have heard God’s assurance of pardon proclaimed in church and at that moment we believed that proclamation in the depths of our own souls. In that moment we felt clean and pure, washed whiter than snow. But we have found that the spotless white snow of God’s grace all too soon gets mixed with the grit and grime of sin for a host of reasons. Sometimes in spite of our attempts at the confession of sins and God’s repeated assurance of pardon, unresolved guilt lies frozen in the depths of our soul like old snow on the side of the road. Other times, we remain stuck in sin because we travel roads rutted with the ice of old sins. And still other times, we slide off the road into new ones because we have this slippery habit of justifying whatever we want to do. Our lives are so much what they are, so frozen and so deep, that we can’t really forgive ourselves and begin life anew and remain white as snow.
If you’ve ever felt that way, let me tell you about an Aha moment I had that really helped me understand what it takes to experience the warm joy of this promise. The computer lovers in the office were talking about the new scanner we had just purchased for their computers. Like all scanners, it can copy a printed page right into your computer. You run the scanner over the page and, voila, there is that page in the computer. The problem is that you can’t work with the scanned in page, until now. Now there is a software program that will enable you revise the scanned page any way you want. For example, a member came in to have a mission letter scanned, but as he gave it to the secretary, he noticed a typo. "Oh no," he moaned. "Now I have to re—type the whole letter." "No problem," replied the secretary, "We have this new software." She scanned in the letter, revised it, and the letter was totally perfect.
I’m always intimidated by whiz bang technology, but I cover it with sarcasm. So I said, "How long will it be until they are able to scan in our lives, use some unimaginable new software, and correct all the mistakes, so that the edited life is totally perfect. Think of it. No typos, no errors, no little sins, no big sins, no old habits, no flawed character, no inherited depravity. Totally perfect." To which someone said, "It’s already been done." And I said, "Aha. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow."
That helped me understand why some of us are stuck in the bleak mid—winter of unresolved guilt, continued sin, self—justifying evasion, that whole ugly pile of sin heaped on our soul like those immense mounds of grey snow littering the ends of shopping mall parking lots. To be washed whiter than snow, you have to scan your sin and you have to use the new software. Both of them—scan your sin and use the new software. Let’s think about them.
A scanner reads every single mark on the page; it doesn’t miss a thing. Often our scanning, our confession and repentance, isn’t as thorough. Recently, we have seen public examples of incomplete scanning when a politician like Congressman Larry Craig or an entertainer like Brittany Spears gets caught doing something scandalous. Rather than frankly confessing their sin and admitting their guilt and asking forgiveness, they make excuses, blame others, claim that there were extenuating circumstances, or otherwise minimize what they did. I mention such public figures not because they are any worse than any of us, but because the very publicity of their flaws shows us what we cannot see or admit in ourselves.
Contrast such incomplete scanning of sin with David’s confession of his sin in Psalm 51. He begins with a plea for mercy. "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion." He did not say, "Have mercy on me according to my good intentions, or according to my relative innocence, or even according to my faith, but simply according to God’s love and compassion. To be washed whiter than snow, you have to get rid of any notions that you deserve to be washed.
In fact, in vs. 3 David says that becoming whiter than snow depends on knowing exactly the opposite. Notice how vs. 3 puts it, "For I know my transgressions." Wash me, because I know how sinful I am. In her book Glittering Images, Susan Howatch tells the story of an Anglican priest. He had such a complete moral and emotional breakdown that he has to seek counseling. Early in his recovery he wants to confess his sins, so he can partake of Holy Communion. But his counselor won’t let him make confession. "You can’t really confess your sins," says his counselor, "until you know them, and you really don’t know yours at this stage in your recovery." In Psalm 51 David says, "I know my sins…" In what follows, he shows us that he really does.
"My sin is always before me." Denial is such a powerful psychological barrier to scanning sin. We want to turn away from it, just forget about it. But before you can safely put your sin behind you, you have to face it squarely in all its ugliness. You can’t move on to new life, until you keep sin before you long enough to see its full sinfulness.
David did, and that’s why he says, "Against you and you only have I sinned…." Now that sounds peculiar if you know what sins David is talking about. Behind Psalm 51 lies that lurid tale of David’s sin with Bathsheba and against her husband. While idling on his rooftop, David saw the gorgeous Bathsheba bathing on her roof a few doors away. He sent for her and committed adultery with her. When she came up pregnant several weeks later, David tried to cover up his sin by calling her husband Uriah home from the battle front. He hoped that Uriah would immediately rush home to his wife like any loved starved soldier would do, so that Uriah will look like the father. When Uriah refused on the grounds that a soldier can’t enjoy such privileges while his comrades are suffering on the front, David got him drunk and sent him reeling home. When that didn’t work, David sent him off to battle again, with secret orders to his commander to put Uriah in harms way so that he will be killed. That is exactly what happened, leaving David free to marry the grieving widow and cover his sin. It is a story that makes the salacious TV shows like "Desperate Housewives" look tame by comparison. David sinned terribly against Bathsheba, Uriah, his own army, his country, his own self.
But here in Psalm 51 he says to God, "Against you and you only have I sinned." It sounds as though he is brushing aside his sin against Bathsheba and her husband, but that’s not what he’s doing. Rather he is naming the heart of his sin. It’s not just that I did this to other people. Often that’s a way of downplaying sin. Well, after all, she was taking a bath on her roof. And he did act foolishly in battle. There’s always something someone else did that excuses our sin. But David wants nothing to do with such justification. He faces the fact that he has rebelled against God in what he did.
That’s why he calls it evil in vs. 4. It was not just a moral failure, not just a slip of decent behavior, not just a spiritual faux pas. It was, simply, Evil. To be washed whiter than snow, you have to confess the evil of your sin. Then you can say to God, "You are absolutely right, O God, in judging me for what I did, because what I did was evil."
Furthermore, says David in vs. 5, it’s not just what I did. It’s who I am. My sin was not some rare aberration in an otherwise flawless life. No, this sin sprang from what I have been since my earliest days. I’m not a good person who slips occasionally. I’m a born sinner, inherently, genetically disposed to sin.
And it’s not that I didn’t know any better, because I did. Verse 6 he says, "You desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place." I know exactly what you desire, O God. You have taught me your way, and I understand it deep within. But I have chosen to believe a lie and play the fool. I have baldly and boldly gone against what I know is your will for my life.
But David isn’t done with the scanning of his sin yet. He goes on to ask God to change him—— from the inside out. Verse 10 says, "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." You aren’t ready to be washed whiter than snow until you are ready to make a break with the sin. Saying you are sorry, even actually being sorry, isn’t enough. If you are really sorry, you will ask God to help you stop and to make amends. Then and only then have you completely scanned your sin. It may not be that easy to change, but at least you are serious enough about changing to cry out with David, "Give me a willing spirit," a spirit that is willing to do what you command.
That’s what it takes to be washed whiter than snow. You have to scan every detail of your sin. But even that won’t do it. You also have to use the new software. Without the software that produces an absolutely clean copy, merely scanning your sin as David did won’t free you from the frozen slush of sin. The world is full of people who agonize over their sin the way David did, but they cannot find relief from the stain of sin and find themselves washed whiter than snow.
I think of the great Reformer Martin Luther. He tried absolutely everything to get rid of his unresolved guilt, continued sin, old habits, self—justifying attitude. But no matter what spiritual exercises or moral acts Luther performed, he could never feel clean. He prayed endlessly. He fasted rigorously. He engaged in acts of self—punishment. He performed all the spiritual disciplines his confessors could think of, and beyond. But nothing worked. He was stuck in the bleak mid—winter of his guilt and shame, until he rediscovered the good news about what God has done to wash us whiter than snow.
The Good News is that God invented this new software. I’m talking, of course, about Jesus, God in human flesh. The Son of God was born as a soft and cuddly baby. He grew into a flesh and blood man who bore our sin and shame, so that by his suffering and death on the cross, we might become totally perfect in God’s sight. "What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! Oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus!"
Now, we all know that’s true, and yet some of us are stuck in the bleak mid—winter of sin and guilt and shame. How could that be? I suspect it is because we really don’t believe it’s true for us. And that’s either because we haven’t really scanned our sin or because we haven’t really installed the new software. We haven’t genuinely accepted Jesus into our lives. Or we have, but we’re not living by faith in him. Instead we’re walking by sight. Our state of mind and our daily living is ruled by what we can see in ourselves as sinners, rather than by faith in what God says about us as believers in Jesus.
Hear this warm promise for your bleak mid—winter! If you have come clean about your sins before God and have come to Christ for cleansing, then you have been washed whiter than snow. And, as that beautiful old Easter hymn puts it, "it is the spring of your soul today."
Stan Mast
Stan Mast has been the Minister of Preaching at the LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the last 18 years. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971 and has served four churches in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. He also served a 3 year stint as Coordinator of Field Education at Calvin Seminary. He has earned a BA degree from Calvin College and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Calvin and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. He is happily married to Sharon, a special education teacher, and they have two sons and four grandchildren. Stan is a voracious reader and works out regularly. He also calls himself a car nut and an “avid, but average” golfer.
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