Forgive Me, Lord
Psalm 103:1-13
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Key Verse: Psalm 103:8
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
All scripture is a gift, but Psalm 103 is a jewel befitting a crown of honor. It is a gift of praise to God from one who personally experienced God’s unchanging love and forgiveness. It is also a gift to readers who have found the inspiration and encouragement to seek that divine relationship for themselves.
Students through the years have been uniformly impressed by the enthusiasm and the poetic artistry of the psalm which, as John Durham describes it, “rolls forth in a great flood of hymnic eloquence, rushing from a soul too jubilant and rapt and full of God to contain it.”
The psalm also has an elegant structure. To Claus Westermann, it “was planned, down to each individual clause, to be a pellucid and carefully formed work of art.” [DD]
We can read the psalm as an individual prayer of devotion, as the payment of a vow to publicly praise God, or as an evangelistic testimony. [DD] [DD] The song includes significant elements of praise for God’s beneficence toward the poet and towards Israel, so it is appropriate for either private prayer or corporate expressions of worship.
Bless the LORD! (vv. 1-7)
The careful structure begins and ends with a call to bless God (vv. 1-2, 20-22), who had blessed the Israelites both personally (vv. 3-5) and corporately (vv. 6-7). The heart of the psalm (vv. 8-18) magnifies God’s gracious compassion toward persons who are both fallible (vv. 8-13), and finite (vv. 14-18). After praising God’s goodness, the psalmist exalts the Lord’s majesty (v. 19) before closing with a call for all heavenly and earthly beings to praise God (vv. 20-22).
The psalm begins with the writer calling himself to an attitude of worship (compare Psalms 104, 146): “Bless the LORD, O my soul!” We are accustomed to thinking of how God blesses people, but how can humans bless God? One approach is to note that the word can also mean “praise” or “salute.” Thus, the NIV 11 and NET avoid the issue by translating with “praise,” but the word for “bless” has a distinctive feel.
Barak (bless) is closely related to the word for knee (berek), and may also be translated as “kneel.” When God’s people kneel or come humbly to offer their heartfelt praise, God receives it as a blessing.
True praise involves the totality of one’s being. “O my soul” translates the word nefesh, which means more than the Greek concept of a miasmic spirit. It is the Hebrew word for self, life, or one’s entire being. This single word is amplified by the phrase “all that is within me” (literally, “all my insides”).
Verse 2 continues the call to praise and serves as a bridge to the next verses, which explain why the psalmist feels impelled to offer such effusive praise to God and to “forget not all his benefits.” Church marketing consultants insist that if churches want to appeal to contemporary society, they must emphasize the personal benefits of church attendance, not just the number of church programs. This poet certainly knew the benefits of knowing God.
The immediate advantage of trusting God is seen in one’s personal life. In vv. 3-5, a string of participles describes what the LORD could do. God not only “forgives all your iniquity,” “heals all your diseases,” and “redeems your life from the Pit,” but also “crowns you with steadfast love and mercy” and “satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Who wouldn’t want such benefits as those? We can forgive the psalmist for the hyperbole of his waxed eloquence, for God never promised the perfect health and consistent prosperity he seems to imply. The psalmist believed that God had the power to forgive, to heal, to save, and to bless with the kind of loving presence that rejuvenates the soul.
This broad sequence of verbs elucidates the psalmist’s desire to praise God with all his being. He was not speaking of some abstract idea, but of personally experienced renewal.
Trust the LORD (vv. 8-18)
What God has done for the psalmist, he has also done “for all who are oppressed,” most notably for the people of Israel (v. 6). The loving character that inspires God to forgive, heal, and redeem also motivates divine justice for the oppressed and vindication for downtrodden.
Israel could know about God’s love and character because “he made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel” (v. 7). The law of God was not given as a burden but as a gift – not to bind the people, but to free them to experience security and joy. The law is one of God’s greatest gifts, because it is based in liberating love.
The main body of the psalm (vv. 8-18) is a reflection on the compassionate grace of a consistent God who knows Israel and still holds a love that does not rise and fall with the people’s erratic behavior. The poet emphasizes God’s compassionate understanding of human fallibility (vv. 8-13) and finitude (vv. 14-18).
The writer begins this section with a remembrance of God’s self-revelation of divine attributes to Moses as one who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (v. 8, quoting Exod. 34:6-7). This does not mean that God never grows angry over the sin and corruption that threaten humankind. Yet, while God’s love is unbounded, there are limits to the divine wrath: “He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever” (v. 9).
If we all got what we deserved, there would be little reason for hope, but God “does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (v. 10). The psalmist’s position seems at odds with the tit-for-tat covenant stipulations of Deuteronomy, which promise blessings for human faithfulness and cursing for disobedience (for example, see Deuteronomy 28 and 30).
[DD] How do we explain this?
The psalmist holds a more compassionate view of God, believing that divine forgiveness may override the punishment people deserve. He illustrates this through three comparative statements.
The first is vertical: as high as the heavens are above the earth, such is the measure of God’s infinite love toward those who hold him in awe (v. 11). The second runs horizontally: “as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us” (v. 12).
Why would God forgive so freely? A third simile makes it clear: “as a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him” (v. 13). Loving parents place reasonable limits on their children’s behavior, but their love does not cease when children fail to obey.
This thought provides the transition to vv. 14-18, which celebrate God’s compassionate understanding of our human nature. “For he knows how we are made; he remembers that we are dust” (v. 14). Since God made us, the psalmist reasons, God understands our nature from the inside out.
God also knows that we are finite and limited. As a dainty flower may spring up only to wither before the hot desert wind, so our days are short (vv. 15-16). When humans die, they may be forgotten on earth (“its place knows it no more,” v. 16b), but God does not forget.
No, God remembers: “the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments” (vv. 17-18).
We note the psalmist’s belief that God’s love is eternal, but not unconditional. It is promised only to “those who fear him,” that is, who worship God in reverence and awe (vv. 11, 13).
God’s love is available to all, but forced upon none. While v. 18 suggests that God’s eternal love is limited to those “who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments,” it does not imply perfection. The whole point of the psalm is that God understands human fallibility and offers forgiveness to the penitent. Still, those who don’t acknowledge either God or their sins can hardly expect to experience forgiveness.
Praise the LORD (vv. 19-22)
Having praised Yahweh’s expansive and everlasting love and goodness, the psalmist concludes by extolling God’s majesty: “The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (v. 19). God’s pervasive power and infinite love is worthy of universal praise. So, like the author of Psalm 96, the poet frames the psalm with an appeal to bless the LORD at both the beginning and the end.
The psalmist began with a gradual movement from the individual outward to all people, and then to the heavens. Now he reverses the order, calling first on God’s mighty angels (messengers, v. 20) to sing praise, then the “heavenly host” (a lower order of heavenly attendants, v. 21), and then the created order (v. 22). Finally, the psalm returns to where it began in one ebullient, forgiven heart – “Bless the LORD, O my soul!”
Christian believers do not live under the same covenant as the psalmist, but we worship the same God, one whose steadfast love and graciousness has been expressed most beautifully through Christ.
Bless the LORD, indeed!
Adult Teaching Resources
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This PDF contains the Teaching Guide, Digging Deeper, and Hardest Question pages.
Read Scripture online: Psalm 103:1-13
Youth Teaching Resources
Social Media Challenge
Asking for forgiveness is hard. Take time this week and raise awareness for something that you need to be, or have been, forgiven for.
Additional Links/Resources
Read Scripture online: Psalm 103:1-13
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Video
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“Understanding Forgiveness” from The Shack
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