12. Who can understand his errors? Cleans thou me from secret faults. 13. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins, let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. 14. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord my strength, and my redeemer.
Today’s devotional is dedicated to Psalm 19:12-14 — David’s prayer to be cleansed from sin. Jesus taught to acknowledge the Father with the Disciples prayer. Paul taught the early church to pray for spiritual wisdom. David’s prayers in the book of Psalms cover a wide range of emotional needs, but in Psalm 19 his focus is on being cleansed of his sins.
Verse 12 gives us a true sense of Jesus’ words in Matthew 26:41, “The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” Jesus spoke these words to the disciples after praying in Gethsemane and finding them asleep the first time. Ironically, verse 41 starts with the words “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation“, — temptation being the entrance to sin.
Psalm 19:12 also prompts us to hearken the words of Paul in Romans 7:15 (NIV), “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” David is asking God, “what man can understand the errors of his own ways?” Although separated by centuries, David recognizes the same exact struggles Paul describes — having a spirit aligned with God’s law, but flesh that is sinful by its very nature. The exact same struggles that we face today, some 2,000 years after Paul’s writing.
What God considers sin is often much different from what we believe to be sin. As such, there are times when we are not even conscious of our sins. This may be what David is referring to when he writes, “Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” A clearer understanding might be, “Declare me innocent of sins I am unaware of.” It also has to be considered that David may be asking forgiveness of sins only known to him and God — faults known to the Lord but may never be known by others.
Verse 13 shows David’s understanding that God is all-knowing, and his willingness to be fully vulnerable — spiritually “naked” before Him. Without diving into Hebrew root meanings, we understand “presumptuous sins” to be acts of sin willfully committed against God’s law, often with pride and arrogance, as the Hebrew text suggests. David is acknowledging that a prideful heart leads to sin and risks falling away from God — what he calls “the great transgression.” But a humble heart is one that seeks God, aligns with Him, and finds righteousness.
The closing of Davids prayer echoes commands we see throughout Scripture. We are taught to be mindful of our tongues, to speak with clean conversation, and for the thoughts our hearts to be clean as well. In this way, as followers of Christ, we are examples to others of what being Christ-like is — and this is acceptable to God. All sin begins in the thoughts of our hearts, and proverbial fires are kindled with the sparks of our tongues. Proverbs 23:7 teaches us, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so he is.” And Jesus warns us in Matthew 12:36, “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”
These two verses strike at the very heart of the origin of sin — how we are shaped by thoughts we dwell on, and the weight and gravity of what we choose to speak — both inwardly and outwardly.
David’s Psalms embody the meaning of God’s words “A man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22), and Psalm 19:12-14 is no exception. In this passage we learn that pride and arrogance often lie at the root of sins we are aware of, and that there are sins we are not aware of. We see that we can pray for protection from a prideful heart and ask forgiveness for the sins we do not recognize. And when we these are our prayers, the Lord is faithful to strengthen us, cleanse us, and redeem us.