Matins Devotion: August 11, 2026

Psalm 51:1-3

There’s a famous scene in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” where Lady Macbeth is wandering around in a mad, hallucinatory state crying “out damned spot.” The spot she refers to is an imagined stain of blood belonging to King Duncan, the man she and her husband Macbeth have recently murdered so he can reign in Duncan’s place. It’s a bloody projection of her guilty conscience.

The point of the scene, of course, is that no matter how hard she tries, Lady Macbeth can’t erase the evil she’s committed. She can’t take the heart she’s defiled with sin and make it clean.

If only she’d trusted in the words of another king, King David. After that king himself became guilty of murder to cover up his adultery, he cries out words of guilt. But he doesn’t cry out for God to give him a way to take away the damned spot from his sinful heart. David knew, as Lady Macbeth didn’t, that filthy hands can’t clean a filthy heart. Rather, David begs God for a new heart, a clean heart, the heart of God Himself. He cries out for God to renew a right spirit within him, for God not to cast him away from the divine presence and to take not His Holy Spirit from David. In other words, the king whose heart is stained with the bloody spot of guilt asks for God to give him the blood of the King that will take away the spot of his guilt and make him new.

When we were guilty of murder through our hatred, when our hearts were defiled with cruelty, lies, lust, idolatry, covetousness, and every other iniquity, the King of Kings went to the cross and shed His own blood in order to take away the blood we shed. Through that blood, He washed us clean. Through that blood, He claimed our sins as His own and erased all evidence of our guilt. Through Christ, there is no longer any damnation for those who believe. And through Christ there is no spot. The evil we could not destroy He destroyed. The evil heart we could not clean He killed. And in its place, He gave us His own heart—a new clean heart, a clean heart, a pure heart. 

So when your conscience is torn apart by guilt, don’t sleepwalk. Don’t hallucinate. Don’t drive yourself mad trying to figure out how your bloody hands can clean your bloody heart. They can’t. But the blood of Jesus can and has made you clean. In your moments of anguished grief, don’t trust in yourself. Turn to Christ and He will always make all things new.