The Christian Life
"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."
Psalm 51:17
There is a moment that comes to every believer, and it is one of the most important moments of a life. It usually arrives quietly — in the car, or in the middle of the night, or during a sermon that was not aimed at you. Something you have done or said or allowed comes into focus, and you see it for the first time not as you have been describing it to yourself, but as it actually is. And with that comes a particular kind of grief: not merely that you have made a mistake, or damaged something, or embarrassed yourself — but that you have wounded Someone who loves you.
What a person does in the hours after that moment matters enormously. It can be the beginning of a great healing, or it can be smothered and forgotten by the weekend. This article is about what Scripture says to do with it.
And a word before we begin. The writer of these lines needs this as much as anyone who reads it, and probably more. Nothing here is written from above.
Start with the astonishing fact underneath the whole subject.
Scripture tells believers plainly not to grieve the Holy Ghost of God. Consider what that instruction assumes. You cannot grieve a force, a principle, or an energy. You can only grieve a Person, and only a Person who cares about you. Nobody is wounded by the conduct of a stranger they are indifferent to.
So the very possibility of grieving God is evidence of something wonderful: that He is not a set of rules to be broken but a Person to be hurt, and that He has bound Himself to us closely enough that what we do reaches Him.
This changes the character of conviction entirely. The question is not merely have I broken a commandment? — though that matters. It is have I hurt the One who gave Himself for me? Those are different questions, and they produce different repentances.
Scripture gives us the words of a man in exactly this position, and it does not hide who he was or what he had done.
He was a king, a worshipper, a writer of songs — and he had committed adultery, arranged a man's death to cover it, and lived for the better part of a year as though nothing had happened. Then a prophet came and told him a story about a poor man's lamb, and he pronounced judgment on the man in the story, and the prophet said four words: thou art the man.
What he wrote afterwards is the most honest thing in the Bible about this experience.
"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me." (Psalm 51:1-3)
Notice what is absent. There is no explanation. No mention of pressure, of provocation, of what anybody else did first. He does not say it was complicated. He does not remind God of his years of faithful service. He asks for mercy, and he asks on the basis of God's character rather than his own — according to thy lovingkindness, not according to my record.
And notice the phrase my sin is ever before me. He is not being melodramatic. He is describing what conviction actually feels like: the thing will not stay put. It surfaces in the middle of other activities. That restlessness is not the enemy; it is mercy at work.
Then comes a sentence that puzzles many readers.
"Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest." (Psalm 51:4)
Against God only? He had wronged a woman, a husband, a family, an army, a nation. How can he say only?
He is not denying the horizontal damage — he deals with that elsewhere, and Scripture certainly does. He is naming the dimension of sin that we habitually forget. Every wrong we do to a person is also, and more deeply, a wrong done to God. The neighbour was made in God's image; the marriage was God's institution; the brother belongs to Christ. Behind every human wound stands a divine one.
This matters practically, because it is possible to be sorry for the consequences without ever reckoning with God. A man may regret the damage to his reputation, the strain in his home, the loss of standing — and never once look up. That is remorse, and it can be intense, and it saves nobody. What David does here is lift his eyes.
Now the heart of the psalm, and the sentence that has kept more guilty people from despair than almost any other.
"For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." (Psalm 51:16-17)
Read the first half carefully. He would gladly have offered sacrifice — he had the animals, the wealth, and the authority. It would have been easier. Most guilty people would far rather do something: give more, serve more, work harder, take on some penance that lets them feel the account is being settled.
God says He does not want it. What He wants is a broken spirit — and the word broken is not a pleasant one. It means what it says: a self-confidence that has cracked, an insistence that has given way.
And then the promise, which is the gentlest thing in the psalm: thou wilt not despise. He does not say God will merely accept it, or tolerate it. He says God will not despise it — which is precisely the fear of everyone who comes to God after failing badly. We assume that a broken thing is a worthless thing, that God has no use for damaged goods. Scripture says the opposite: the broken heart is not the disqualification. It is the offering.
Elsewhere the Scriptures say that the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity dwells in two places — the high and holy place, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit. God keeps two addresses, and one of them is a broken heart.
Notice that David does not merely ask for pardon. He asks for something more.
"Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)
The verb is create — the word used of making something out of nothing. He is not asking for repair or improvement. He knows the trouble is deeper than his behaviour and that he cannot reach it himself.
This is the difference between resolving to do better and actually repenting. Resolutions address the last incident. This request addresses the man who produced it.
Conviction usually comes to us. But there is a prayer in Scripture that goes looking for it, and it is one of the bravest sentences a person can say.
"Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:23-24)
Weigh what is being asked. Not show me if others have wronged me. Not vindicate me. Search me. Try me. See if there be any wicked way in me.
Most of us do not pray this, and the reason is honest enough: we suspect He would answer. But consider that the psalm opens by declaring that God has already searched him and knows him altogether — He knows the sitting down and the rising up, and understands the thought afar off. The examination is not new information for God. The prayer simply asks Him to share what He already sees.
And notice how it ends. Not and condemn me, but lead me in the way everlasting. The purpose of the search is not humiliation. It is direction.
Feeling terrible is not the same as repenting, and Scripture distinguishes them sharply.
"For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death." (2 Corinthians 7:10)
The two look alike from outside — both involve real distress — but they run in opposite directions.
The sorrow of the world grieves over consequences: being found out, losing standing, facing an awkward conversation. It turns inward, produces self-pity or self-hatred, and changes nothing. A man can be crushed by it for years and never become one degree different.
Godly sorrow grieves over the offence itself, and it moves. It gets up, goes, speaks, and puts things right. That is the test, and it is a plain one: has it produced motion? If a week of anguish has resulted in nothing said and nothing done, it was probably not the godly kind.
Scripture reduces the whole response to four verbs, and they are worth taking one at a time.
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Humble themselves. Not be humbled — this is something a person does to himself. It means dropping the defence, ceasing to explain, and agreeing with God about what happened.
And pray. Bring it to Him in words. Not a general acknowledgment that we are all sinners, but the specific thing, named.
And seek my face. Notice the object. Not seek forgiveness, not seek relief, not seek the restoration of what was lost — seek Him. It is possible to want the consequences lifted while having no particular desire for God, and He is not fooled by it.
And turn from their wicked ways. The word is turn. Not regret, not resolve, not intend. Stop, and go the other way. This is where most repentance quietly fails, and where it is proved genuine.
And then the three promises, which are extravagant: I will hear, I will forgive, I will heal. He does not merely pardon and leave the ruins standing. Healing is included.
Here is the part that costs, and it is the part most often left out.
When a man met the Lord Jesus Christ in Jericho, he had spent his working life defrauding his own countrymen through the tax system. He was rich, and he was hated, and he was small enough to need a tree. And when Christ came to his house, he stood up and said something remarkable: half of his goods he would give to the poor, and if he had taken anything from any man by false accusation, he would restore him fourfold.
Nobody demanded it. There was no negotiation, no formula, no calculation of the minimum required. It came out of him the way water comes out of a broken jar, because something inside had genuinely given way.
And observe the arithmetic. Fourfold was the restitution the law required for a stolen sheep — the harshest category. He did not look for the lightest available reading of his obligation. He reached for the heaviest.
The Lord Jesus Christ said that salvation had come to that house that day. Not because the restitution purchased it — nothing purchases it — but because that is what a changed man looks like.
The same principle appears in the Sermon on the Mount, and the picture is startling. A man is at the altar, in the act of worship, and remembers that his brother has something against him. He is told to leave the gift there, go and be reconciled first, and then come and offer. Worship is to be interrupted for a conversation with an offended brother. God will wait; the reconciliation will not.
So the shape of full repentance is this. It begins with God, because that is where the deepest offence lies. But it does not end there. It walks out of the room and goes to the person, and it says the specific thing plainly, and it repairs what can be repaired.
It is easy to hear all this as being about large public failures. Most of it is not.
In a marriage. The contempt in a tone of voice. The years of small dismissals. The apology that was really an argument. A husband or wife who has been told I'm sorry you feel that way has not received an apology, and knows it.
With children. Anger discharged onto a child for something that was not really about the child. A promise not kept. A criticism that landed in a place the parent never saw. It is one of the most powerful things a father or mother can do to go to a son or daughter and say plainly: I was wrong, and I am sorry, and it was not your fault. Children forgive readily. What they cannot do is make sense of a wrong that is never named.
In any position of responsibility. The greater the responsibility, the greater the wreckage of an unacknowledged fault, because more people are downstream of it. And the harder it is to admit, because a reputation is now attached. But a leader who repents openly teaches more in five minutes than in a year of instruction.
Among brothers and sisters. The word said about someone rather than to them. The judgment formed on one account. The friendship allowed to die rather than face an awkward conversation.
And in the ordinary daily failures that nobody sees — the resentment nursed, the prayer neglected, the private compromise. These grieve God too, and they are where most of a life is actually lived.
Two honest difficulties, because they stop people.
What if they will not receive it? They may not. The person may be cold, or may use the admission against you, or may have moved on and prefer not to reopen it. None of that is your responsibility. Scripture says as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men — an instruction that quietly acknowledges it may not be possible. Your obligation is to go and to speak truthfully. Their response is between them and God.
What if it is years old? Then it is years overdue, and it is still worth doing. People carry these things far longer than we imagine. An apology arriving a decade late has healed a great many wounds that everyone assumed were closed.
There is a third difficulty that is rarely spoken. Sometimes the cost is public — standing, reputation, the good opinion of people whose respect we value. That is real, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. But Scripture is blunt: he that covers his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy. The covering is the expensive option. It only looks cheaper because the bill arrives later.
General repentance accomplishes nothing. So take a few minutes with these.
Is there a name that came to mind while reading this — and did I move past it quickly?
Is there anyone who would say, truthfully, that I hurt them and never acknowledged it?
Have I ever confessed something to God that I have never confessed to the person it was done to?
Is there an apology I have been composing in my head for months, which I have never actually delivered?
And: when I last said sorry, did I include an explanation of why it was partly their fault?
The man writing this stands under every one of those questions, and put himself under them before writing a word of it. Whatever else this article is, it is not a message from someone who has finished the work.
And now the reason none of this needs to end in despair.
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
Weigh the two words: faithful and just. Faithful, because He promised. Just — not merely merciful, but just — because the penalty has already been paid in full by Another, and it would now be unjust to charge it twice.
That is why the believer's repentance is not an anxious pleading with a reluctant God. It is coming home to a Father whose arms were open before we started walking.
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
And if you have never come to Him at all — if what you feel is not the grief of a child who has wounded his Father but the first stirring of a soul that has never been reconciled — then the same door stands open, and the terms have never changed.
The conviction you feel today will be weaker tomorrow and gone by next month. That is not a sign that it was unimportant; it is how a conscience gets quiet. Every unanswered conviction leaves it a little harder to hear the next one.
So do it now, while it is still sharp. Say the specific thing to God, without the explanation. Then get the name, and make the call, and say it plainly, and repair what can be repaired.
It will cost something. It always does. But the broken heart is the one offering God has promised never to despise — and the man who brings it will find, to his astonishment, that he is not met with a lecture but with a welcome.
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."2 Chronicles 7:14
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Thy throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Thy presence.
We thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, and for **Him** who was wounded for our transgressions and turned to look upon Peter. We praise Thee for Thy preserved Word, which declareth **"A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise"** (Psalm 51:17), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before Thee of the sins we have excused, minimised, and carried in silence. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech Thee for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Thy Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Thy Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Thy people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to bring every grieving conscience to the only place where sin is dealt with, for Thy glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to Thee, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to Thee just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Thy law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring Thee nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Thy Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).