(Of David. Instruction.) Blessed is he [whose] transgression is forgiven, [whose] sin is covered!
Psalm 32 is David's own song after sin, and it opens not with a rule to keep but with a blessing pronounced over a guilty man. The verse raises three questions. What does "blessed" mean? What does it mean for sin to be "covered"? And how can a guilty man be called happy?
Blessed Means Prosperous
One writer traces the opening word back to its root idea and applies it to eternity as well as to now.
What do we understand by being "blessed"? The main idea of the word is "prosperous." A prosperous man before God knows his sins, and finds the answer to them in God. Happiness marks such a man. Look at man for eternity, and not only for this life: no man is so prosperous as the one who says, "I have nothing but sin in myself, but all my rest is in God." That man has something to sing about. Whichever way he turns, he finds some fresh note of gladness and joy in it.
One writer points out that David wrote about this blessing as a man who had tasted it himself:
David, the guilty sinner once, is now the object of mercy. He knows he is forgiven, and can write of "the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness without works" (Rom. 4:6). He tasted this blessedness. It was his own real experience.
Not the Sinless, but the Forgiven
Read carefully, the verse says nothing about a clean record. It describes a man whose record was bad and has been dealt with.
In the psalm before us (Ps. 32), we get the blessedness of, and God's dealings with, the sinner whose transgressions are removed. "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered [not the one who has not transgressed, who has not sinned]. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit" (that is, the restored soul).
Transgression and Sin
The verse uses two different words, and they are not repetition. One describes what a person did; the other describes what a person is.
"Transgression forgiven" — "sin covered." Transgression is quite different from sin. Transgression is when a person has wandered from a marked path; sin is the principle of self-willed independence in the heart of man. David found both of these things in himself, and they did not suit the heart of a creature in the presence of God. As soon as he had them forgiven and covered, he could see what prosperity it was: he could sing of all his wanderings as tied to the God who had forgiven them.
What "Covered" Means
The word "covered" carries a fixed Old Testament meaning, and its picture goes back to the first pages of the Bible.
Here we have the great Old Testament thought about God's dealing with sin in forgiving mercy. It first appears in Genesis 3:21. Adam and Eve tried to cover their sinful nakedness from God's presence with fig-leaf aprons of their own making, but it did not work. So God Himself covered them with coats of skins — and such coats meant the death of a victim… So the meaning of the word "atonement" is clear: the covering of sin by sacrifice.
When God covers sin, He settles it for good:
"Covered" points back to the covering on the mercy seat. God puts sins away and remembers them no more.
Blessing Without Works
The blessing does not depend on a man's record. One writer presses this home with David himself:
No man in the Old Testament records fell lower than David in his sins against God and man. Yet we learn that his sins did not exclude him from the blessing… It is a blessing into which the works of the best man cannot bring him, and from which the sins of the worst man need not exclude him. It is all of God and from God. It binds the heart of the sinner who receives it in everlasting gratitude to the gracious Giver.
Paul also says more than David could say:
David stood in the dim light of pictures and prophecies. He could only take comfort from the negative side: the Lord will NOT impute sin to the believer. Paul stands in the full light of the redemptive work of Christ, and gives us the comfort of the positive side: "God imputes RIGHTEOUSNESS without works."
Forgiveness Takes Away Pretending
Forgiveness like this changes how a person comes to God:
Full absolute forgiveness, the not imputing sin at all, is what takes guile from the heart. Otherwise we run from God. We make excuses and play our sin down, even when we dare not call it right. Where full pardon is before us, we have courage to be true in heart. Who will not list all his debts when the only question is that someone else will pay them? Who will not tell his illness when the cure is certain?
Summary
- Blessed — the word means prosperous. The richest person alive is the one who has nothing but sin in himself, and all his rest in God.
- Forgiven — the blessing rests on a man who did transgress and did sin, not on one who never did.
- Covered — the word behind it is atonement: sin covered by sacrifice, put away and remembered no more.
- Not imputed — David could say that God does not charge sin to him. Paul adds the positive side: God credits righteousness without works.
- Guileless — full pardon ends pretending. Nobody hides a debt when someone else has agreed to pay it.