A decade ago, Carl Trueman wrote a provocative piece in the journal Themelios entitled, “What do Miserable Christians Sing?” He argued eloquently that in our cursed world we need the language of lament that the Psalms provide. What can make a Christian more miserable than sin? As Paul puts it in Romans 7:24 reflecting on his sin, “Wretched man that I am!”

Don’t you know all too well that wretched feeling of guilt, shame, and frustration that washes over you when you give in to sin yet again? When we are full of sorrow for sin and we’re searching for the words to express that emotion in a godly way, the penitential psalms give us an infallible template.

The penitential psalms are those psalms where the psalmist focuses on confessing sin and seeking forgiveness. There are seven psalms that are usually included in this category: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143. How can these psalms help us with our own repentance?

They prevent us from becoming too focused on ourselves. That is a temptation when we have sinned. Of course, it’s possible not to focus enough on ourselves when we have sinned—to blame anyone but ourselves or to refuse to own what we have done with all kinds of excuses and self-justification. True repentance begins with a recognition of the sinfulness of sin primarily because it is against God. It is so easy to feel sorry for our sin for selfish reasons: because we’ve let ourselves down, lost the good opinion of others, hurt someone connected to us, or got ourselves into trouble.

One of the many glories of the Psalms is that they are God-centered. Things make sense in relation to Him. Modern worship is often about the worshiper rather than the One who is worshiped. That can even be true of our confession of sin—somehow it becomes all about me (“I feel bad about myself”). The Psalms correct this distortion and will not let us focus on ourselves. This is why David prays in Psalm 51:4: “Against you, you only, have I sinned.…” Perhaps we read that and think to ourselves, “What about Uriah? What about Bathsheba? Didn’t David sin against them too?” And of course he did, but before he sinned against anyone else, he sinned against God. God’s law protected Uriah and Bathsheba, and it was only by smashing through that law that David was able to hurt them.

They help us see our sin as it really is. If we diminish the seriousness of our sin, we will not deal with it properly. Imagine someone with an aggressive cancer convincing themselves they have a trivial infection and just need a course of antibiotics or a couple of Tylenol to put things right. Their disease would run rampant through their body. The penitential psalms force us to look our sin squarely in the face and see its ugliness—to understand the consequences our sins deserve.

To many Christians today, the way the Psalms speak of sin and its effects may sound extreme: “My iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness” (Ps. 38:4–5). In Psalm 51:1–2, David uses three different word pictures to confess that his sin is like a debt that needs to be cancelled, ingrained grime and filth that needs deep cleaning, and an incurable disease that needs to be healed.

How many Christians today do not want the pain of dealing with sin as it requires? How many want to convince themselves and others that sin isn’t so very bad: We are under grace, not law, after all! The penitential psalms will not allow us “to heal our wounds lightly” by saying “peace, peace when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14; 8:11). Sin is that bad—in fact it’s far worse than we realize. We should feel terrible—we should feel worse than we do. Only then can we receive the healing of forgiveness.

They assure us of the gospel solution for our sin. The penitential psalms, like all the psalms of lament, move from the depths of misery to the heights of joy. They show us the enormity of our sin in all its God-defying hatefulness; but they do not leave us in despair, for they point us clearly to the answer to our guilt—the gracious atonement God Himself provides in Christ. Psalm 130:7–8 says, “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”

This redemption, pictured in the Old Testament in the substitutionary death of the innocent sacrifice, is accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. He came and sang these penitential psalms for us. He didn’t have any sin of his own to confess, but “for our sake he [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). As our sin-bearer, He carried the guilt of the enormity of our sins against God as if He Himself had committed them. He knows more about the grief and misery that sin produces than you or I ever will. He is the reason we can sing the penitential psalms with hope and confidence, confessing our sin in all its unmitigated horror but then enjoying the joy and peace of the forgiveness He purchased for us with His blood.