Miserere Mei, Deus

“It’s true.  We’re beggars.”

-Martin Luther, on his deathbed

 

One of the things I must remind myself constantly when pursuing these academic and scholarly driven studies of divinity and historical Christianity, I must never forget when I come across truth, that it is truth.  It is real, it effects me to my innermost being, and I must apply it.

 

It’s too easy to sit back and read Calvin’s Institutes and say, “Yep.”  It’s too easy to read the biography of Martin Luther and say, “Well I’m glad he made the right choice.”  Or perhaps even Scripture itself far too easy to understand and comprehend, but when applied I hardly know anything.

 

Even the most simplest of doctrines can break my heart and destroy any composure I have when I put myself in a godly perspective of things.  When the smallest of words and short phrases in the Bible seem to have little passion behind at first read, upon a second I realize a greater context and I am speechless at it’s truth.

 

I once gave an analogy that doctrine and theology is like an artificial heart – you put pieces together, they do different things and effect the artificial heart in different ways, but if you’ve gathered all the right pieces it will work.  But an artificial heart is only good if you place it in your chest to make you live!  Even a perfect and unblemished theology is worthless if it is not applied.  To me sanctification isn’t learning from my mistakes and trying to live a more godly life (which incidentally, is more like transcendentalism), sanctification is the living out of the realization of the greater context of what God is doing in me.

 

Paul Washer gives an excellent example of how un-effected we are by Scripture sometimes.  He was talking about the crucifixion of Jesus and said if you had been there, you would have gone mad.  He said that many people imagine this scene of the crucifixion of a man being pinned to a cross and him bleeding, looking sorrowful then dying.  This is not so.  Crucifixion is the most painful way to die, period.  It is long, it is painful, it is meant for the one purpose of dragging out every last inch of pain and suffering in a person before they die.  The word itself, excruciating, comes from the latin word excruciatos, meaning from the cross.  Our Lord did not die quietly looking mournful.  It can take days of the worst torture men can create before a person mercifully dies, all in which loved ones watch and can do precious little.  You can’t imagine adequately what you would have done if you had been there, it goes beyond comprehension.

 

Kinda blows apart your little calvary scene with Buddy Jesus looking kinda sad that He had to die, huh?  That’s coming to a greater and a truthful realization of what is.

 

“Have mercy upon me, O God.” from the Psalms.  What do you think of when you read this?  David trying to ask forgiveness for some sin he ‘fell’ into?  Some emphatic writings of a poet?  Or maybe do you see your own sin, which you willfully committed, separating you from a right and holy God who is your only means of salvation?  You see David tries to express mans total depravity here but can only so far with human language.  Simply put, work on behalf of a hopeless sinner, for you are the infinitely holy God and I a worthless wretch.

 

But we are not the Disciples who had to mourn for 3 days before their hope was found anew, for our Lord is risen and He sits at the right hand of the Father, from where He shall judge the living and the dead.  Yes our faults and our transgressions are always before us, but our hope in the glory of God revealed by salvation is always closer and dearer to us than anything else.

 

But how do we do this?  Where from Scripture can I show where to do this?

 

Psalm 51

“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness: according to your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

 

The sacrifices to God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart – These, O God, you will not despise.”

 

Once we realize what is true about world and about ourselves, realize we have no where else to go but before the throne of mercy, that we are utterly incapable of anything infinitely worthy, can we go before a righteous God who will accept us.