Behold, in iniquity was I brought forth, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Psalm 51 is David's prayer after the prophet Nathan confronted him with his sin. By verse 5 he has stopped talking about what he did. He is talking about what he is.
The verse is not about one wrong action, and not about something his mother did. It is about the nature he was born with.
He says, "in sin did my mother conceive me." He is not speaking of a sinful act. Since his mother had a sinful nature, she could only give him the same nature... The teaching of Scripture on this self-judgment is found only in the New Testament, so David did not understand it fully. But he did face the facts honestly here, and that is the first step in finding deliverance from the power of the sinful nature.
David has already owned his transgressions in the earlier verses. Here he goes further and judges the source those transgressions came from.
Where God begins His work of repentance in the soul of a sinner, sin becomes known and judged. It is judged not only by its fruits — that is, sins or evil works — but by its root and inward character... God's word through the prophet Nathan, "You are the man!", had pierced the heart and conscience of the penitent king of Israel and placed him in God's holy presence. So he not only confesses his great transgressions and sins, that is, what he had done, but what he is. He not only judges the bad fruits of the bad tree, but the bad tree itself. Not by way of a light excuse, but in thorough self-judgment... He lays the axe to the root of the tree, to judge not his parents and ancestors, but himself.
Some read the verse as a man blaming his birth to soften his guilt. It is the opposite. The confession costs him more, not less.
He is not making an excuse for his sins, or casting the blame of them upon his mother; he is saying, "My very nature is corrupt, the springs of my being are polluted."
Admitting an offence is one thing. Admitting what produced it is another. That difference decides whether a soul is set right again.
Until there is confession of sin, and not only of a sin, there is no forgiveness... He does not say only, "I have done this particular evil" — that he does in verses 1-4 — but he recognises the root and principle of sin... God has brought the soul down, by the working of His Spirit on it, to detect the principle of sin. So there is confession of that, and not only of a particular sin. There is then positive restoration of soul.
Verse 5 does not stand alone. The next verse asks for truth in the inward parts. A stained record and a stained nature need two different remedies.
These verses trace sin back to its origin. Sin turns out to be not simply sinful acts, but a sinful nature. So the sinner needs not only cleansing from actual sins, but a new nature in "the inward parts."
David is not a special case. This truth is where any understanding of new birth has to begin.
Eve fell, and her fall has involved all the children naturally descended from her. With this truth, sad and humbling as it is, we must begin, or we cannot understand the need for new birth.
This admission is rare in the Old Testament. Its language is usually about guilt for what people do, not about the state they are born in.
Strictly speaking, sin itself does not come into question in the Old Testament, though birth in sin is recognised in one place only (Ps. 51:5)... Being lost and being guilty are different. One is my state; the other is my responsibility and my guilty failure.
One writer sets this verse beside the birth of Jesus. David's confession is the opposite of what was true of Him.
His humanity was holy in itself, without the least trace of sin. David had to confess, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5). David's Lord was that Holy Thing!
("That Holy Thing" is the older wording of Luke 1:35, where the angel told Mary that her child would be called holy, the Son of God.)
- Root. David confesses more than a bad deed. He confesses a bad source: the nature he was born with is corrupt.
- Axe. He lays the axe to the root of the tree. He judges the tree, not only its fruit, and blames himself, not his ancestors.
- Confession. Owning sin, not just a sin, is what turns confession into real restoration of soul.
- Remedy. Cleansing from acts is not enough for a sinful nature. It calls for truth in the inward parts and a new birth.
- Contrast. Everyone born into Eve's family must say this verse. The Son of God never could: His humanity was holy from the start.
Behold, thou wilt have truth in the inward parts; and in the hidden [part] thou wilt make me to know wisdom.
In the verse before, David traced his sin back past the act to the nature behind it. Now he turns to what God wants. The verse sets two things side by side: what God wants deep inside a person, and what only God can put there. Older translations read "truth in the inward parts," and the writers quoted here keep that wording.
A person can look right and sound right. This verse goes past both.
But "You desire truth in the inward parts" — truth, not the look of it, not the profession of it, but the thing itself, the reality of it… You may make a fair outward show. You may make a profession. But until you deal directly with God, you do not know what "truth in the inward parts" is. You may have done good actions… but God must judge them, by His estimate of them, not yours.
God wants truth inside, so outward religion settles nothing. Saul, the king before David, shows what that means.
He had no faith in God, but in the medium at Endor… In earlier days he had wrapped himself in zeal like a garment. Extreme danger strips him of his borrowed robe, and he appears in his own naked unbelief. God judges the heart. "Behold You desire truth in the inward parts" (Ps. 51:6). The piercing eye of God saw no truth in Saul.
One writer takes the phrase literally, down to the organ it names.
The "inward parts" are the reins, the kidneys — hidden in the centre of the body… They work all the time to clean the blood of what would destroy life if it stayed… So their work is the clearest picture of that moral sorting and rejecting of evil which the conscience oversees… There God desires "truth," or steadfast faithfulness. And in the hidden part He makes us know "wisdom" — a word used for telling good from evil… Here the new nature begins to show itself. The conscience wakes up as the heart turns to God.
Many people admit one wrong and stop there. David goes further.
"Truth in the heart" — God's desire, first of all, is to produce this by bringing us into His presence when we have sinned. Often a soul will judge one action and go no further. But that is not yet all the truth in the heart… It is not enough for him to judge only his sin. He judges the sin in him — what he was from birth… Wisdom means seeing these things clearly.
Confession is where that honesty takes shape:
If I confess sin — own all sin as sin — that is truth in the inward parts… So God brings us into His presence knowing we are forgiven. There I know I am cleansed according to God's mind.
The second half of the verse shifts from what God desires to what God will do. David does not promise to produce wisdom; he says God will make him know it.
As light breaks on David's soul, he discovers that God is not indifferent to him… God has desires and plans for him… And David's desire now agrees fully with God's. He wants truth and wisdom in him, the chief marks of a nature he was not born with… God can do this miracle of cleansing, where a new nature replaces the old. Out of the truth and wisdom this renewal puts in his hidden parts, joy and gladness would spring. Creative power belongs to God alone, and only that could bring it about.
Commentators differ on how much David himself grasped. L M Grant says David "did not fully understand it though he did face facts honestly at this time."
What God forms in the hidden place does not stay hidden. It reshapes ordinary dealings.
But truth in the inward parts is what God asks for — true to God, to myself, and to others. True to God, in all His Word asks of me. True to myself, in really being what I am, no more, no less, putting on no false appearances, not deceiving myself. True to others, not deceiving them, avoiding all hypocrisy.
- Inward, not outward. God wants truth in the depths of a person, so appearance and profession settle nothing.
- Inward truth is reality. Not the look of honesty, but the thing itself — measured by God's estimate, not ours.
- Inward honesty goes to the root. Owning the act is a start; owning the nature behind it is the truth God is after.
- Inward wisdom is God's gift. David asks nothing of himself here; the hidden place is where God Himself makes wisdom known.
- Inward truth shows outwardly. What God forms in secret makes a person true to God, true to self, and true to others.