Psalm 51: A Rabbi and Two Imams

It was a wonderful opportunity. I was asked to participate in an open discussion about death and dying from a patients perspective. The event was held at a local medical college. It was the first ministry situation I had ever been in where I had sat between a rabbi and two imams. My Jewish and Islamic colleagues were all very warm and articulate, but I had an unfair advantage, I came armed with the Gospel. I carried something into the room that no one else had and as the evening went on this message glistened with greater and greater beauty.

The men on either side of me were gentle and caring. They knew their faith well, but they had one distinct disadvantage, the only message they brought into the room was the message of the law. The only hope they could give was the hope that somehow, someway, a person could be obedient enough to be accepted into eternity with God. The more they spoke, the more beautiful the Gospel looked.

The most significant moment of the evening came when we were asked about what we would say to a family of someone who had committed suicide. It was at this moment that the Gospel shined the brightest. I said, "Suicide doesn't change the paradigm. Think with me, who of us could lay in our bed during the last hours of our life and look back and say to ourselves that we have been as good as a person could be? Wouldn't all of us look back and have regrets about things we have chosen, said, and done? None of us is able to commend ourselves to God on the basis of our performance. In this way, the person who has committed suicide and the person who hasn't are exactly the same. Both of them are completely dependent on the forgiveness of a God of grace, in order to have any hope for eternity."

You and I share identity with the hypothetical suicidal man just as we share identity with the adulterous and murderous king of Psalm 51. Our only hope is one thing, God's "unfailing love" and his "great compassion."(verse 1) We cannot look to our education, or family, or ministry track record, or our theological knowledge, or our evangelistic zeal, or our faithful obedience. We have one hope, it is the hope to which this ancient Psalm looks. Here is that hope in the words of a wonderful old hymn, "Jesus Paid it All."

"Since nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim,
I'll wash my garment white
In the blood of Calvary's lamb.

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson satin;
He washed it white as snow."

I said goodbye to the rabbi and the two imams and got in my car to drive home. But I didn't just drive, I celebrated! I was very excited as I thought about the evening, not because I had had such a golden opportunity to speak the Gospel, but because by means of God's grace I had been included in it!