Psalm 31:10 For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones are consumed. These two passages tell of the source of both. The psalmist tells us that his iniquity was the cause of his strength failing. Nehemiah, that an excess even of penitential feeling will be injurious. One would have thought that there would have been no danger of such a feeling being in excess, yet, though their sorrow was the holy and healing sorrow of penitence, the prophet urges them to check it, and instead of looking at their transgressions, to look rather to the merciful and bountiful grace of God. It is morbid and conceited to magnify our sin against God's mercy; to brood over it and refuse to be comforted; while it is a generous and pious thing to magnify God's mercy against our sin; to say, "Although my sin be great, yet God's forgiving grace is greater still." We are all prone to think and say we have not repented enough. But we forget that sorrow for sin is not the end but only a means, leading us to forsake sin. As soon, therefore, as our sorrow produces this effect, it has accomplished its end, and should no longer be dwelt upon. There is manifestly a point beyond which sorrow, even for sin, is neither a practical nor a beneficial thing. That cannot be a godly sorrow which rises up as a thick black cloud before God's pardoning mercy. That only is a godly sorrow which leads us to God. If a man So cherish sorrow for sin as to engender in his heart the feeling that his sin cannot be forgiven, then his very sorrow for sin itself becomes a sinful thing; for it misrepresents and mistrusts God. It might be a heathen man's sorrow, who had never heard of Christ's salvation, but it should never be the sorrow of the Christian hearer, before whom that salvation is set every day. And then, in a parenthesis, and with a glimpse of profound spiritual philosophy, the prophet adds as a reason for this urgency — "For the joy of the Lord is your strength." There is no strength save in a joyous heart. Sorrow may lead to strength, just as dislocation may lead to order. A wrong state of things may have painfully to be set right. Old things may have to be swept away, before new and better things can come; but dislocation itself is not strength, but weakness. So sorrow for sin is in itself weakness; it is the heart emptying itself, and bemoaning itself, it is a looseness of the joints, a melting of the marrow. It is not a building up, but a pulling down. Only a joyous, confident, satisfied heart can be a strong one — a heart assured of itself, and assured of God's favour and helping. This is the essential means and condition of spiritual strength. God gives us strength, but not by doing things for us which we can do for ourselves. He helps us as a physician helps a patient — not by proffering us an arm to lean upon, but by infusing new life and strength into our souls — by making His strength perfect in our weakness. Iniquity makes a man's strength fail, he is strong just in proportion as he is holy. The strenuous urgencies of Scripture that we should rejoice in the Lord always; the solicitous provision for our rejoicing that God has made; nay, the very character of Christian salvation and privilege make it imperative upon every one of us to cultivate to the utmost that joy of the Lord which is our strength. Only sin and unspiritualness hinder joy, and so disparage religion, and keep the young and joyous from embracing it. The redemption of the world lingers, and the millennium is kept back because the church is too austere. Its energies are weak, because it has not a rejoicing impulse. Did we walk closely with God, and realize the blessedness of communion with Him, our joy would be full. (R. Allen.) Parallel Verses KJV: For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed. |
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