Remember Not the Sins of My Youth

There is a prayer in this Psalm that the youngest believer can pray, and the oldest needs to keep praying: "Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O LORD." Notice the strange logic. David asks God to remember — and to forget. To forget what we did when we knew less, when our hands were sloppier, when our hearts were unripe. To remember His own goodness instead, and us by means of it. We have all carried these sins forward into the morning. They wake with us. They sit on the edge of the bed. They speak in the voice we use to talk to ourselves. The Psalm hands us a sentence to say into that voice: not "forget what I did," which we cannot make God do, but "remember Your love, which You have already promised to spend on this matter." Mercy is older than my failure. Goodness is more lasting than my shame.

There is a Name through which this prayer is answered, and the Psalm does not yet know it but it is reaching for Him. "For your name's sake, O LORD, pardon my guilt, for it is great." For the sake of a Name. The Psalter has set down here, in a tiny clause, the whole shape of how forgiveness will eventually come — not on the basis of what we have managed but on the basis of a Name that has done what we cannot. And we know now whose Name that is. The blood of Jesus has paid the cost of every transgression of every youth and every age, and the Father, in remembering His Son, no longer remembers our sin against us. He sees the steadfast love that has covered it. He sees the goodness that has answered for it. So when the old voice of an old failure speaks at the edge of the bed in the morning, the Psalm has given us our reply: for the sake of Your Name, pardon my guilt. He has, and He does, and He will.