Blessed is the one whose transgression is lifted off, whose sin is covered over. Blessed is the one to whom Yahweh does not attribute guilt and in whose spirit is no treachery.
One of the hardest parts of writing anything is knowing where to begin. The Psalmist could hardly have chosen a better opening. In just 15 words in Hebrew, Psalm 32 offers a picture of a possible reality. Conceiving of sin as a burden to be carried or a blemish to be hidden, this text enters into the very soul of the follower of Israel’s God. The faithful life is about the removal of the terrible weights that crush us. Faith is a search for the lighter, healthier, saner approach to life. The person who experiences such removal of the weight of sin can now live with confidence in the saving power of the Almighty. Emotions and actions follow, as well as reinforce and celebrate, the liberation given. And, in many ways, the actions and feelings of lightness of being are themselves resources for preventing the reacquisition of the weight.
Yet this change of status has not come easily for our author. Rather, Yahweh has disciplined the pray-er of this psalm (vv. 3-4), leading the penitent human being to acknowledge his or her sins (v. 5: “I made my sin known to you and did not cover up my guilt”). A curious thing here: verse 1 celebrates the covering over (Hebrew: kasah) of sin by God, while verse 5 recognizes that for human beings to cover over (same verb!) sin is highly inappropriate. To obscure sin is a divine prerogative. Repentance, which implies truth-telling about our failures, is ours.
And this is why the righteous praise God. The removal of the evil in the life of an individual or a group is an extraordinary miracle, and one well worth celebrating. Nor is the celebration our job alone, for the one who finds God to be a hiding place (v. 7) also hears the divine voice offering illumination and guidance (vv. 8-9). The conversation about forgiveness includes those who experience it, and the God who gives is.
For me, thinking about sin and forgiveness this way is immensely helpful. In our conversations in church, we seem too wedded to one image of sin, the judicial one. The overemphasis makes us say many silly things (such as the idea that all sins are equally bad or that God abhors sin so much he can’t be in the same room with it, making God sound like a paranoid germophobe). It’s helpful to correct our speech by thinking about other aspects of sin, whether it is weight in this text or debt as in the “Our Father” or disease in other places. Evil has many dimensions. And God can triumph over them all.
Postscript: If you want to read more about images of sin in the Old Testament and early Judaism and Christianity, read Gary Anderson’s little, but very learned and readable, book Sin: A History (Yale University Press, 2010).