“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” (Psalm 51:5, 6)
“Psalm 51 was written by King David when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” The foregoing information is meant to set the context for Psalm 51 by inviting the reader to recall the encounter between the king and prophet Nathan (2Sa 11:4; 12:1).
The prophet asked the king the following question: “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes?” (2Samuel 12:9a). Please note that prophet Nathan did not beat around the bush, as it were. He went straight to the point by describing the evil David had committed: “You struck down [killed] Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own.” (Verse 9b).
King David did not answer the prophet’s question in the same chapter. His only reply was to say: “I have sinned against the Lord.” (Verse 13). However, I believe that he wrestled with the prophet’s question and answered it in Psalm 51, particularly verses 5 and 6.
Note that the king uses “surely” twice in the two verses as to suggest the undeniable nature of his utterance.
Remember, the prophet asked: “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes?”. Although the king does not directly answer the question in 2 Samuel 12, we hear him say in Psalm 51:5 that he was sinful at birth, sinful from the time his mother conceived him.
In other words, King David is saying, I did what is evil in the Lord’s eyes because I was born sinful; in fact, I was sinful from the time my mother conceived me, i.e. as a foetus. His sin led him to this revelation, as it were.
My sin does not make me sinful, but I sin because I am sinful. This is true about each and every human being on earth. It is important to note that the fact of being born sinful changes nothing to what God desires, or simply put, the will of God for humankind: “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place”, David writes.
In writing the foregoing king David acknowledges that he knew the truth and wisdom from the Lord. Yet, his knowledge was no match against his sinful nature. No wonder that despite the level of sophistication in technology, the number of philosophies around, multiplicity of religions and religious movements, the future for mankind still looks bleak.
It is important to note that whilst the prophet describes David’s behaviour as despising the word of the Lord (meaning despising the Lord), it is most likely that King David himself did not see it that way. His sin made him realize that he had a serious problem, namely, a sinful nature. The situation is like Paul writing in Romans 7:22-25, “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law waging war against the law of my mind making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my member. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Jesus Christ is the answer to the question by the wretched man.
Lord grant us the grace to know that our problem (the human problem) is beyond our ability to overcome until we run to you to be born again (John 1:12, 13).
