One of my many undeveloped blog projects has been my theological autobiography.

In 1993 or so, I made good friends with a PCA school teacher. He was discipled in RUF but also had a lot of other stuff in his background.

So I have no idea where he was coming from when he asked me to confirm his suspicion that “New Covenant” Christians should never pray when confessing sin,

Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me (Psalm 52.11).

I told him (as best I remember) that there were a couple of problems with this.

First, if the problem was the doctrine of regeneration, then David’s praying those words was no less problematic than a present-day believer doing the same.

Second, the Reformed have always prayed the Psalms, in line with the vast majority of the entire Christian tradition.

But David was a professing believer who had at least been called into God’s presence (his kingdom, the visible church) by a “common operation of the Spirit.” As someone caught in high-handed sin, what is true of all believers is true of David:

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which woundeth the conscience and grieveth the Spirit

So it made every sense for David to pray this way. And we should to. Praying this way is a demonstration of true faith by “trembling at the threatenings” in the Word of God. Indeed, in this way David showed that he was not

utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived; and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair.

I learned something by dealing with this question, but at the time it never crossed my mind that I was saying anything that any Reformed minister would object to. I thought I was simply showing the difference between the Bibllical beliefs of the Reformed and the quasi-Marcionite beliefs of dispensationalism.

I had no idea that this was a hint of a revisionist storm to come.

(Having said that, I am open to the possibility that there has been ambiguity, despite the uniform early Reformed liturgical tradition of praying the Psalms, on this point. One could make the case from the Scripture index for the Westminster Standards that Psalm 52.11 is danced around. It is only used as part of Psalm 51.1-14 to demonstrate that

he that scandelizeth his brother, or the Church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended (WCF 15.6)

And as part of the entire Psalm used to substantiate that the justified

may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of His countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.

Does this mean that the Westminster Assembly had dispensationalism creeping into their thoughts? I think that is highly doubtful in light of the Assembly’s robust view of the necessity of a life of repentance for salvation.)