Psalms 51:4

Psalms 51:4. Against thee, thee only, have sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

This is the sting of sin to a truly penitent man, that he has sinned against God. The carnal mind sees nothing in that. If ever it does repent, it repents of doing wrong to man. It only takes the manward side of the transgression; but God’s child, though grieved at having wronged man, feels that the deluge of his guilt-that which drowns everything else- is that he has sinned against his God. It is the very token and type and mark of an acceptable repentance that it has an eye to sin as committed against God.

Now observe that the psalmist, having thus sinned, and being thus conscience of his guilt, is now made to see that, if the evil came out of him, it must have been in him at first; he would not have sinned as he had done had there not been an unclean fountain within him.