TO THE CHOIRMASTER. A PSALM OF DAVID, WHEN NATHAN THE PROPHET WENT TO HIM, AFTER HE HAD GONE IN TO BATHSHEBA.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”

Grace is a controversy. The superscript of Psalm 51 gives the reader the horrible occasion of David’s prayer. Here is a man who has committed adultery, then murder. He has condemned himself (2 Sam. 12:1-7). This all makes his prayer more ‘intolerable.’ David is guilty and yet he comes to God. How can that be right? This man is guilty. And in all of his guilt and shame, he comes to God.

David comes to God and cries for mercy on the basis of God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy. He has no leg of his own on which to stand. He has nothing. The only chance that David will receive mercy will be solely dependent upon the LORD’s sovereign grace and unconstrained goodness through the power of His covenant love. The plea for mercy is the confession that you have no other option. The plea for mercy is an act of forsaking all else. There is nothing that he can present before the Judge of the universe. He has no trinket to impress. No good deed to deflect his crime. He is empty-handed and undone.

Here. Right here. This where we are. We may not have committed the same atrocity as David, but our coming to God will happen no other way. Just like David, we have no leg on which to stand. We have nothing to offer. We are just as broken. Just as desperate. Our coming to God must be a cry for mercy. A cry that forsakes all else and is according to the sovereign grace of God poured out in the crucified Son.