To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee: that thou mayst be justified in thy words and mayst overcome when thou art judged. (Psalm 50:6 DR)
We humans in our hubris are far too often very sure of our own cleverness, which enables us to rationalize almost anything we do. This is perhaps most evident when we have committed an obvious wrong against someone, yet mange to twist the justification so that we are the victim: We are owed something and didn’t get it; all circumstances compelled us to act, etc.. We can devise an infinitude of excuses so as to avoid acknowledging our complicity in evil.
Many of the pathologies of the present era are likely the result of humanity’s in-built need for expiation, yet our nearly complete abandonment of any means to achieve it. The pagans of old may have had brutal religions of blood, but they at least recognized the need to expiate their sins, as ineffective as they were in doing so. With the rejection of anything above the material world we are left with souls we don’t believe we possess yet which deep down still have need to expiate their guilt. And we inevitably find ways to do so, which leads to insanity. We are forced in our guilt to offer up our our bodies in their biological given-ness, to offer up our minds in their ordered-ness to reason and the apprehension of objective truth; even the universe itself will become a scapegoat upon which to place our guilt and sins. The gnawing of our iniquities will create its own black hole so as to swallow all meaning, all good and evil, all pleasure and pain, all of reality so as to avoid staring it in this face, that “thou are the man.”
It is only through confession of our sins that we can find expiation of this guilt, for the sacrifices we make or can make in and of themselves are ineffectual as we are sinners and cannot offer the pure sacrifice that God requires. Only God Himself can do so, which is the reason for the Incarnation, as the prophet Job foresaw:
If I be washed, as it were, with snow waters, and my hands shall shine ever so clean: Yet thou shalt plunge me in filth, and my garments shall abhor me. For I shall not answer a man that is like myself: nor one that may be heard with me equally in judgment. There is none that may be able to reprove both, and to put his hand between both. Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me. I will speak, and will not fear him: for I cannot answer while I am in fear. (Job 9:3-35 DR)
Our Lord Jesus Christ was the oblation that was perfectly pleasing to God, as St. Paul describes:
For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things; by the selfsame sacrifices which they offer continually every year, can never make the comers thereunto perfect… For it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sin should be taken away…
Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith: “Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not: but a body thou hast fitted to me… Then said I: Behold, I come to do thy will, O God:” he taketh away the first, that he may establish that which followeth. In the which will, we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once. (Hebrews 10:1, 4; 9-10 DR)
In the sacrament of Penance we unite our wills to that of God, by acknowledging our sinfulness (thus admitting His righteousness) and pleading for his mercy through the merits of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. The priest acts in persona Christi and thus this absolution is—within the economy of the Mystical Body of Christ—our Lord Himself forgiving us of our sins and cleansing us from unrighteousness.
A fundamental component of this confession is recognizing and admitting that we have sinned against God. The Psalmist notes this here, which might seem somewhat odd. After all, David sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah by committing adultery with her, he sinned against Uriah by trying to get him to forsake his duties so as to cover up the sin, he sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba by having him murdered and against those he compelled to carry out the orders, and finally against his people by causing scandal, as no doubt some of his servant and soldiers had loose tongues.
Yet in this passage the Psalmist admits that it is only against God that he has sinned. On the natural level David was at the top of the pecking order. He may have sinned against many people, but there was no one who was capable of judging him, and much of what he had done was in the dark and could not be proven. Yet in his heart and conscience all was as bright as day before God who would judge him, and thus his own conscience (which he tried to deaden through cover-up and time) testified against him:
“To thee only have I sinned;” as being the only judge before whom he could be convicted. There was no one else to sit in judgment on him, and if there were even, he could not be convicted, for want of evidence; for, though common report condemned him, there was no judicial proof of his guilt; still, he stood convicted before God, for his own conscience bore testimony against him before that God who searches the reins and heart; and he, therefore, candidly avows, “And I have done evil before thee;” for, though he did the evil in private, in the darkness of a closed chamber, he could not evade the all seeing eye of his Maker. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 50, 4.)
Another aspect of David’s confession here is that God alone is just and without sin, and thus is the only One against Whom one sins as against One Who is sinless, for sins committed against other humans are sins against others who are also sinners:
What is, “Against You alone have I sinned, and before You an evil thing have I done.” Because You alone are without sin. He is a just punisher that has nothing in Him to be punished; He is a just reprover that has nothing in Him to be reproved. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 50, 9.)
The justification of our Lord in His judgments against sin flow from this sinlessness. In the human order we might pass right judgments, but they are always as one sinner passing judgment against another; there is thus ever a lack of perfect righteousness in such judgments, just as (as was seen above) there is a lack of perfection in the sacrifices that sinners offer. This is precisely why the sacrifice of our Lord was perfect and one, for as the God-man He is both the perfect sacrifice and the perfect Judge:
“That you may be justified in Your sayings, and conquer when You are judged.” To whom he speaks, brethren, to whom he speaks, is difficult to understand. To God surely he speaks, and it is evident that God the Father is not judged. What is, “And conquer when You are judged?” He sees the future Judge to be judged, one just by sinners to be judged, and therein conquering, because in Him was nothing to be judged. For alone among men could truly say the God-Man, “If you have found in Me sin, say.” [John 8:46] (ibid.)
It is thus to our sinless Lord that the Psalmist makes this confession, to the One who sees into the inner recesses of the hearts of men yet in his benignity and charity gave Himself up for them that they might find cleansing from sin and union with God:
I suffer, He says, undeserving, for men deserving, in order that them I may make deserving of My Life, for whom I undeservedly suffer their death. To Him then, having no sin, says on the present occasion the Prophet David, “Against You only have I sinned, and before You an evil thing have I done, that You may be justified in Your sayings, and conquer when You are judged.” For Thou overcomest all men, all judges; and he that deems himself just, before You is unjust: Thou alone justly judgest, having been unjustly judged, That hast power to lay down Your life, and hast power again to take it. [John 10:18] Thou conquerest, then, when You are judged. All men Thou overcomest, because You are more than men, and by You were men made. (ibid.)
I wanted to keep this animation simple, and I saw this image of a hand raised in a sort of ambiguous posture which I thought might be nice for either praise or confession or both. I isolated it in Photoshop and in After Effects added some tinting to it for the coloring and added a bit of Wiggle Hold to the Position to give it some movement.
I laid out the text and made a couple boxes to serve as mattes for two pieces of the text. I then precomped the text layers and put some padding around them in the precomp and then added Motion Tile to create a repeater. I looped the animation of that and had them going in opposite directions.
Enjoy.
To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee: that thou mayst be justified in thy words and mayst overcome when thou art judged.
(Psalm 50:6 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: