Most people will
be aware that the Americans talk about their prisons as ‘penitentiaries’. You
may also be vaguely familiar with the concept of ‘penance’. In religious
circles this normally means either a feeling of regret for misdeeds or some
religious payment for sin. In
Biblical terms the word ‘penitential’ means to ‘repent of sin and to seek
forgiveness’. We are going to discover in these psalms a number of lessons
about sin, the sinner and how God deals with sin.
Let
me summarise them:
1.
There
is nothing that can be done by an individual to atone for sin;
2.
God
is extremely angry about our sin;
3.
Sin
weakens and exhausts a person morally and physically;
4.
Sin
has a defiling and contaminating effect in the life of the believer;
5.
Sin
ruins our relationship with God;
6.
God
alone can forgive sin;
7.
God
is gracious and merciful as well as holy and just;
8.
There
are forces against the believer that would seek their downfall (i.e. our flesh,
the world and the Devil).
