A God of forgiveness and mercy

Psalm 130 is a very short but sweet psalm which reflects on the forgiveness and mercy of God in a time of distress.

The date of this psalm is not known, but it has the feel of someone writing after the exile to Babylon. You could easily imagine someone like Daniel writing this.

Unlike Daniel’s prayer (Daniel 9), however, this psalm starts with a personal plea for forgiveness. The psalmist cries out,

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
O Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy. (Psalm 130:1–2)

He asks this not on the basis of his own merits, but on God’s character. He notes,

If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?

But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared. (3–4)

I love those two verses. None of us deserve to even stand before God. If God kept a record of all our sins, we’d be dead.

Someone noted that if you sinned just three times a day and lived 30 years, you’d already have a list of over 30,000 sins. I’d hate to think about how many sins would be on my record.

But because of the blood of Jesus, my slate has been washed clean. As the psalmist writes, “With God, there is forgiveness.”

He goes on to say,

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope. (5)

What is he waiting for? For the grace of God to come. On what basis does he wait for it? On the promises of God.

And if the psalmist had the promises of God to lean on, how much more as Christians do we? Specifically,

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just
and will forgive us our sins
and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

And as sure as the morning comes, so will God’s forgiveness to those who repent. (Psalm 130:6)

Having repented of his own sins, he then calls out to his nation to do the same, saying,

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins. (7–8)

Let us never forget that as people who have known God’s forgiveness, we too are called to share the good news of his mercy to those around us and to call them to repentance.