A Battle Against God for God
Read: Psalm 6
1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?6 I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
In his small but beautiful book on the Psalms, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on the fact that “there is in the Psalms no quick and easy resignation to suffering. There is always struggle, anxiety, doubt.” Indeed, sometimes God’s behavior seems “too difficult to grasp. But even in the deepest hopelessness God alone remains the one addressed.”
The beginning of Psalm 6 is permeated by this address, or what Bonhoeffer calls a “battle against God for God.” He explains: “The wrathful God is confronted countless times with his promise, his previous blessings, the honor of his name among men. If I am guilty, why does God not forgive me? If I am not guilty, why does he not bring my misery to an end and thus demonstrate my innocence to my enemies?”
But, Bonhoeffer reminds us that “There are no theoretical answers in the Psalms to all these questions, as there are none in the New Testament. The only real answer is Jesus Christ.” And this is exactly where the Psalms point us. When the Psalmists cry out: “We can no longer bear it, take it from us and bear it yourself, you alone can handle suffering,” they lead us to the one who actually bore our infirmities. “They proclaim Jesus Christ to be the only help in suffering, for in him God is with us.”
Jesus Christ shines through the Psalms. He embodies the struggle of our lives. He is “not only…the goal of our prayer; he himself also accompanies us in our prayer. He, who has suffered every want and has brought it before God, has prayed for our sake in God’s name: ‘Not my will, but thine be done.’ For our sake he cried on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Now we know that there is no longer any suffering on earth in which Christ will not be with us, suffering with us and praying with us–Christ the only helper.”
If this is true, we can pray in confidence, just as the last three verses of Psalm 6 show us. As Bonhoeffer puts it: “Trust in God without Christ is empty and without certainty; it is only another form of self-trust. But whoever knows that God has entered into our suffering in Jesus Christ himself may say with great confidence: ‘Thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.’”
To prepare your heart for Sunday, I invite you to listen to the song “Christ the Sure and Steady Anchor,” a song that beautifully reflects on Jesus Christ, the God who is with us in our suffering.
