Innocent of Great Transgression

“Who can discern his errors?

    Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;

    let them not have dominion over me!

Then I shall be blameless,

    and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

    be acceptable in your sight,

    O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Psalms 19:12-14 ESV)

As followers of Jesus Christ we are to be those who have died to sin, who are daily dying to sin, and who are walking in obedience to our Lord in holy living. But as long as we live in flesh bodies, we will not be perfect (complete). And we won’t be perfect until Jesus returns and he takes his faithful bride to be with him for eternity, which is when our salvation will be complete, and not until then. But lack of perfection is never to be used as an excuse for continued, deliberate, and habitual sin against the Lord.

Now David had two categories here, one of hidden faults, and the other of presumptuous (willful, audacious) sins. The former he asked the Lord to declare him innocent of, so he was not talking about willful and secretive sins, but of things perhaps that he didn’t do so well at, and of which he was unaware. And they could be areas of our lives where we could stand some improvement. But the other category is definitely describing sin which you know you are committing, and it is blatant, deliberate, and usually habitual.

And, if you are walking in deliberate and habitual sin, and not in holiness and righteousness, and not in obedience to the Lord, you do NOT have Jesus Christ as your advocate to speak to God in your defense. Instead, you have a God who is saying, “I never knew you. Depart from me you workers of lawlessness,” for you would not submit to Christ as Lord, and you would not obey him in walks of holiness and righteousness, in practice, but sin was your practice, instead. And so you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

But David, although he was not perfect, at the time that he wrote this he was praying to the Lord that the Lord would keep him back from presumptuous (audacious, foolhardy, shameless) sins, and that such sins would not have dominion over him. But he still had a choice to follow the leading of the Lord or not, and he still had the choice to obey the Lord or not. So, although we need the Lord to help us to not sin, we have to make the choice to obey the Lord OR to walk in sin and to reject his assistance.

So, “blameless” doesn’t seem to indicate that we are absolutely perfect in every respect, but that we are not deliberately and habitually and/or premeditatedly sinning against the Lord and against our fellow humans. Rather, we are in the practice of denying self, dying daily to sin, and of following our Lord in walks of obedience to his commands. And we are in the process of being made perfect (complete) in Christ Jesus, our Lord, as daily we surrender our lives and our wills to the will of God for our lives.

So, it is a good practice for us to endeavor to regularly examine our own hearts before the Lord in prayer, and to ask him to point out to us any areas of our lives which need to change, so that the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts are acceptable and pleasing to the Lord, in his sight. For sometimes we can become blinded to things in our lives which are not honoring to the Lord, perhaps because we have become desensitized to those things because of the influences of the world in our lives.

So, if we truly want to not be under the control of sin, and if we want to walk blamelessly before the Lord by not walking in willful sin against him, and by making godliness and righteousness and obedience to the Lord our practice, then our hearts and minds and bodies must be yielded to God and surrendered to his will in submission to Christ as Lord. And we must choose his choices, and now obey them in his power, as our practice, and resist the devil, and flee temptation, and now draw near to God in true faith.

[Matt 7:21-23; Lu 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John 6:44; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14; Rom 12:1-2; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 1 Co 10:1-22; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Gal 5:16-24; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 2:8-10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:1-17; Titus 2:11-14; 1 Jn 1:5-10; 1 Jn 2:1-6,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10; 1 Peter 1:15; 1 Pet 2:24; Heb 3:1-19; Heb 4:1-13; Heb 10:23-31; Heb 12:1-2; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15]

Hear My Cry

By G. M. Eldridge

When my soul is worn and weary

And my eyes are filled with grief,

When my hands in desperation

Reach to heaven for relief,

Would I find the words there waiting

If I had the strength to start?

Could a mortal tongue interpret

All the sorrow of a heart?

Spirit, search me in my weakness,

And discern this growing gray.

Intercede in understanding,

Hear the things I cannot say.

Hear my cry, heav’nly Father,

You have known my ev’ry pain.

You have seen all my sorrow,

Hear my cry once again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJiTN56xTg

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