Forgiven Sinners

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Psalm 32:1

In England a sensitive boy joined the British army, but when the shot and shell began to fly, he deserted. In time he became a great astronomer and discovered a new planet. He was sent for by King George, but the man realized that his life was forfeit to the king for his desertion. The king knew him too; what would he do? Before the king would see him, the man was requested to open an envelope. It was his royal pardon. The king brought him in and said, “Now we can talk, and you shall come up and live at Windsor Castle.” He was Sir William Herschel.

William Herschel was guilty and did not deny it! But King George had mercy upon him and made him a member of the royal household. That is what God promises to do for us. “And he will have mercy upon him . . . for he will abundantly pardon.” To all of us poor, lost, wanton sinners the Bible says, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world though him might be saved.”

The “Prince of Preachers,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon, says of this verse:

God, who cannot lie—God, who cannot err—tells us what it is to be blessed. Here He declares that “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” This is an oracle not to be disputed. Forgiven sin is better than accumulated wealth. The remission of sin is infinitely to be preferred before all the glitter and the glare of this world’s prosperity. The gratification of creature passions and earthly desires is illusive—a shadow and a fiction; but the blessedness of the justified, the blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth righteousness is substantial and true.

In Psalm 32:2 David sums it up for me when he says, “Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit” (NIV). I’m sure Sir William Herschel would say Amen! to that.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).