Be merciful to me, a sinner

Against you, you alone, have I sinned,

And done what is evil in your sight. Psalm 51:4

 

Read Luke 18:9—14

If I have ever thought I am not like others, not like those lost in their shame and abject failure; if I have somehow been able to put a boundary marker between me and them, and declare secretly or before God that I’m not that bad, hardly that desperate; if I have the merest suggestion about me or within me that I am rather notable in the matter of Godliness, and only need a little shot of God’s gracious assistance from time to time, then I have altogether substituted a false god for who God is. This God lives in unapproachable light. At the same time this God has, in Christ Jesus, reconciled the utterly sinful world to himself. So there is only one kind of confession he can deal with. He is not concerned to make the fairly good a fair bit better. He rather offers total forgiveness to the helpless confession.

 

Dear Father, I can only join the man who collapsed before you, having no righteousness of his own. I thank you that you saw him. You heard him. He went home justified. He was able to declare himself free of condemnation. Let me, too, cover up no failure, no sin, no shame. Let me bring to you no pretence, no pride, no excuse, no reference to my own spirituality. Rather, let my boast be in Jesus Christ, who took my condemnation and left me free of it, and in him go on my way justified.