Dear Friends,
Did you ever use a word and have someone ask you what it means and find it hard to define for them? We all use words sometimes without a clear understanding of what they mean. While that often doesn’t matter much, there are some words we should be very clear about. Today’s devotional is one of this words – sin. If we don’t know what that means, how can we confess it? What do we need to be saved from? God bless you as you think on these things.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Psalm 51:1-2 (ESV)

  1 Have mercy on me, O God,
  according to your steadfast love;
  according to your abundant mercy
  blot out my transgressions.
  2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
  and cleanse me from my sin!

“I know that every person in this congregation must recognize that he or she is guilty of these three things ― transgression (or rebellion), iniquity (or perversion, twist, bent actions) and sin (i.e. missing the mark, not getting there, not being what we ought to be, what we are meant to be, going here, there and everywhere instead of where we ought to be going ― straight forward).” [David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Out of the Depths: Psalm 51, (Christian Focus Publications, Ross-shire, Scotland, 1995), p. 28]