“Reality (of Sin)”: Psalms 6 & 38
Original sermon given on March 12, 2025 written and delivered by Pastor Jeff Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church from the Lenten Series: From Repentance to Rejoicing.
Watch the sermon live.
“Reality of Sin”
Psalms 6 & 38
Psalms 6 & 38
In the name of the Living God and the Crucified Christ. Amen.
It is a good thing that the Penitential Psalms are in the Bible. If they weren’t, we might not dare pray them or might find their “honest to God” moments offensive to our pious ears. But they’re here, inspired prayers for a reason. The laments of Psalm 6 (as well as 38) remind us that wrestling with God, even questioning God, is not a sign of unbelief but rather is a part of faith. I hope that you can find comfort as I do that my most difficult moments with the Lord, my toughest questions, my weakest times are enshrined in Holy Scripture as legitimate prayers and even songs to be offered.
Psalm 6, one of the seven we’re reading through this Lent, speaks graphically of the physical Reality of sin and its effects. We tend to over-spiritualize so much of Christianity as modern “American Gnostics,” but in Psalm 6 and its twin Psalm 38, so full of spiritual anguish is the Psalmist that he’s feeling the physical consequences. So distressed is he, his body is involved.
His bones are troubled. He’s physically weary with moaning, his eyes hurt, his bed flooded with tears and couch saturated with sadness.
Psalm 38 goes even further: “There is no health in my bones because of my sin… my iniquities are like a heavy burden; they are too heavy for me” (38.3-4).
We in the west — partly because of the influence of platonic philosophy — tend to separate the soul from the body, compartmentalize the physical away from the spiritual. Not so the Hebrews. A Nephesh, the word translated here as “my soul” or “my life,” was a full living being — body, mind, and spirit. When one part of the human creature was under attack, all parts suffered. If one aspect of your life got off kilter, everything became unbalanced — so thought the Hebrews.
We’re finally catching up with this in the wealthy west. You’ll notice that most wellness campaigns include a multifaceted approach of what it means to be a healthy, whole person. Our own church body’s “Wellness Wheel” for church workers includes emotional, relational, vocational, financial, and intellectual wellbeing as well as physical. I’m glad we’re finally catching up to the Hebrew scriptures!
The Psalmist recognizes all this (the physical Reality of sin), as any pastor will also tell you. So many times, I’ve witnessed people physically burdened by sin. I’ve seen the effects of sin and guilt and shame weighing for decades upon their bodies as well as their souls. The old adage is “confession is good for the soul.” Well, it’s good for the body too, for upon receiving absolution or hearing the good news of Christ’s forgiveness and grace, I’ve witnessed the physical release and renewal of the whole person. A forgiven sinner, having carried in secret the weight of guilt and shame for decades, experiences the physical effects of grace. The whole countenance of a person can change.
The Psalmist understands all this, which is why he cries out to God so fervently. We’re used to the Bible giving us orders, God telling us what to do in scripture, but here the writer is so bold as to shout three imperatives at the Lord: “Turn back to me, O Lord; deliver my whole self; save me now… for the sake of your steadfast love, your mercy.” (Chesed).
It is because, and only because, the Psalmist knows of God’s steadfast love and mercy that he dares to call out to Him so boldly in lament. We should be so bold, for we know even more clearly God’s mercy, given to us in David’s descendent and David’s lord, the Lord Jesus, Messiah and Savior.
No greater grief than his, dying upon the cross. No more honest lament, when he cries “Why have you forsaken me?” No heavier burden ever born, with the Reality of the weight of the whole world’s sins upon his shoulders.
Our sins are too heavy for us, too deep. They do weigh us down, seep into our whole selves and crush our bones. As the twentieth century German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “In the darkness of what is left [unconfessed], sin poisons the whole being of a person.” [1]
Our sins are too much for us, but they are not too much for Jesus, the Lamb of God. The steadfast love and mercy of God was made manifest in Jesus, who gave himself fully for us. His payment is enough. His blood cleanses us body and soul. There is nothing that you or I have done which he did not know of first, before he went to the cross. And yet still he went, every heavy, halting step one more heartbeat of love pursuing us. Since he has already carried our shame, and in his very body bore our sins on the tree, lifted them up and taken them away as far as the east is from the west, then why are you still carrying it? Maybe it’s time to release it all to him in faith, and receive release in body, mind, and spirit tonight.
The Psalmist concludes as I shall, in defiance against his enemies. But no, not any of the pathetic little earthly enemies we create of politics, of ideology, of blood or tribe or soil. The original enemies he fears we can’t be sure of, but as people of the gospel we know the real enemies God has defeated. We can name them now and silence them: sin and shame, death and the devil, hell and the harrowing accusations that I’m unlovable, unredeemable, unrecoverable, unusable for God’s work.
These the last, greatest enemies have been silenced by the person and work of Christ — who he is — savior and friend — and what he’s done — went to Calvary and given us his righteousness freely, as a gift.
This, his steadfast love, is our shield against the worst accusations of the evil one, so we can respond defiantly with the Psalmist: “The Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer” (Psalm 6.9). May he do so now this evening, and even unto eternal life. Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 110