Redeemer Church of Waterford

Can a believer who has sinned, and lives with the guilt of their sin, lose their salvation? What does David mean when he asks God to not cast him away from His presence and not to take His Holy Spirit from him?

Sin disorients us from God's law and disorders God's design for our fellowship with God, our worship of the one true God, our rule and maintenance of God's creation, and disfigures the image of God in which we were created. The reordering of this disorder requires - not reform - but a completely new creation "out of nothing."

David is overwhelmed by the reality of the defilement that has resulted from his sin with Bathsheba. With a view toward the procedures God outlined for ceremonial cleansing in Leviticus and Numbers, David goes to the extreme and asks God for a remedy to match the intensity of his guilt: repeated, multiple washings. But only one thing is needful.

When David asks for his transgressions to be blotted out, he's not asking God to merely cover over his sins with white out. As we see David's understanding of God's wrath against sin as it is revealed in the Old Testament, what David is asking for is violent mercy to obliterate his sin rather than himself.

David calls upon all in the great congregation who have benefited from God's salvation to join him in glad adoration of the Lord. Of whom does this great congregation consist? Not the righteous - but poor and needy sinners who are the recipients of God's grace in Christ.