The root of sin is within us, and the poison is in our veins. It is a frightful condition, and, as long as we live on this earth, we will never completely escape the effects of evil. There is much more involved than the work of demons; corruption is within us. Every human being is wicked by nature. We all tend to live our lives outside fellowship with God, and make our plans without consulting our Creator. The wicked man does not want to face the fact that one day he will have to give account of his acts before the throne of Him from whose presence earth and sky will flee, and no place will be found for them.1 Only if we fear the Lord, will we be wise. Our sinful nature will inflate our ego to the point that we think the world revolves around us, and that we are the center of the universe. David says that we flatter ourselves. We tell ourselves that we are intelligent and good, or even better than others. When we cannot see ourselves in relation to God, we have no point of reference and we lack objectivity.
A man will discover his unrighteousness only if he is confronted with God's holiness. This discovery has been made by millions of people throughout the ages, but it has nowhere been documented so clearly and dramatically as in the life of the prophet Isaiah. When Isaiah finds himself in the presence of the Lord, he cries: "Woe to me! … I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."2 The Holy Spirit shows us sin's real character, and He shares with us God's hatred for the poison that kills man. The discovery of our iniquity and of God's holiness is always a simultaneous process. When the devil draws our attention to our sins it is for the purpose of leading us into despair, and sometimes, into suicide. But it is a salutary experience, in the literal sense of the word, if God makes His light shine upon us, and we become scared of our own condition. It is my opinion that this is the way this psalm as a whole should be interpreted. If we see in these verses nothing but a judgment over others, instead of over ourselves, we miss the connection between verses 4 and 5, and we end up with two different psalms.
David demonstrates that sin has penetrated the three phases of our being, and reigns in the domains of our heart, our head, and our will. Jesus tells us that our mouths only utter that which is inside us. In Matthew's Gospel we read: "But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander."3 Our heart is full of evil and deceit; our intelligence is corrupted. Our acts are no longer determined by our mind, because we have disconnected our capacity for logical thought from our love of God. That is why we make the wrong choices. Even if we were able to place good and evil next to each other and judge objectively, as Adam must have been able to do when he was still in paradise, we tend to choose evil because of our sinful nature.
Some remarkable threads are woven into this pattern of which we should not lose sight when looking at the big picture. Many of our sins are passive, in the sense that they consist more in the omittoin of acts of wisdom and goodness than in the commission of evil. David says that our beds occupy an important place in the making of evil plots. When we are alone with ourselves, when it is dark and things from the outside no longer distract us, evil rears its ugly head within us. For those who love the Lord it is a precious experience to be alone with Him; for a man who lives in sin, solitude can be frightening.
Furthermore, sinning means following a certain way. The NIV renders vs. 4 with: "He commits himself to a sinful course and does not reject what is wrong." Most other translations speak about "a way." The NKJ, for instance, reads: "He sets himself in a way that is not good." People who sin move away from God. In Psalm One, David uses the image for sin as a digression of walking "in the counsel of the wicked," or standing "in the way of sinners," or sitting "in the seat of mockers."4 These images show a advancement of stagnation. Yet, time does not stand still; even while we sin, we keep on moving.
Finally, sin is something we ought to reject. The use of this word presupposes the possibility of resistance against evil. Without the help of the Holy Spirit we will not be able to be victorious, but even the unregenerate man should resist sin. Is that not the message God sent to Cain, when He said: "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it?"5
There is an interesting variety of translations of this psalm. The NIV gives the first verse as: "An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes." And the ASV, as well as the KJV, render it with: "The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, there is no fear of God before his eyes." The Adam Clarke Commentary comments: "[The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart] It is difficult to make any sense of this line as it now stands. How can the transgression of the wicked speak within my heart! But instead of libiy…, MY heart, four of Kennicott's MSS. and De Rossi's MSS. have libow…, HIS heart." The KJV reinforces the idea that David speaks about his own condition.
God's lovingkindness, which brings about conviction of sin in the heart of man, is described in a grandiose way in the verses 5-9: "Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies." The Hebrew word translated with "love" is chesed, which is God's covenant love. David expresses himself rather primitively by saying that God's love reaches to the clouds.6 In our age of air and space travel, such a comparison does not amount to much. If we translate the principle of what David wanted to convey, we should say that God's love fills the universe, outer space and beyond. As the horizon of our conception of reality is enlarged, so is the love of God.
We have seen before that God's lovingkindness is a description of His character. It speaks of the goodness of His nature. David does not speak here about God's acts, but about His attributes. With words like "the clouds," "the mountains of God," "the great deep," as the RSV renders it, David wants to describe the eternal aspects of God's being. In a sense, the use of these rather primitive images conveys a better picture than if he had used extraterrestrial terms. There is in the St. Bavo Cathedral in the Belgian city of Ghent, a painting, an altar piece, by the fifteenth centuries artists, the brothers van Eyck, called The Adoration of the Lamb. The painting places this heavenly scene from the book of Revelation in the earthly surrounding of an altar in a Roman Catholic church of that time. The altar stands in a meadow with flowers that can be found all over Belgium. The heavenly reality is translated in images of every day life in a way that fills the world in which we live with the glory of God. If we cannot see the world in which we now live filled with heavenly glory, we will not be able to see heavenly glory either when we get to heaven.
David chooses three of God's attributes as the topic of his hymn of praise: God's love, His faithfulness, and His righteousness, or justice. All three are related to man who is saved by God's grace. "The great deep" in which man and beast are preserved may be a reference to the flood of Noah. The Hebrew word used here is tehowm, which Strongs defines as "an abyss (as a surging mass of water), especially the deep (the main sea or the subterranean water-supply)." The other side of the coin is that millions of people perished in that flood. But the emphasis David wants to make here is that some are saved from judgment, not that others are lost. The suggestion is that it is not God's fault when people are condemned. Yet, the judgment is pictured as God's initiative. Love, or lovingkindness, and faithfulness are seen as parallels; they belong to the whole complex of God's love for man. Righteousness and justice also go together; they are part of God's holiness. But holiness should be seen as the totality of God's attributes. We always have to grope for words if we want to say something about God's character. That was what the Apostle John did, when he said: "And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne."7
The Hebrew word translated in the NIV as "justice" is mishpat, which is defined by Strongs as: "a verdict (favorable or unfavorable) pronounced judicially, especially a sentence or formal decree (human or [participant's] divine law, individual or collective), including the act, the place, the suit, the crime, and the penalty; abstractly, justice, including a participant's right or privilege (statutory or customary." The KJV renders it with "judgments." David sees this as one of God's attributes also. When any of God's creatures that appears before Him, typically he immediately compares and judges himself in His light. The result of this comparison is knowledge of sin. God's character is the measuring rod with which all our acts are measured and judged. If we judge ourselves, as Isaiah did,8 we are saved. If we refuse to evaluate ourselves in the light of God's character, we are lost.
The reference to the flood, in which Noah with his family, and representatives of the whole animal world were saved, becomes an image of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our ark of salvation. This makes this whole psalm an illustration of the fact that God gives to "His people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins."9 We usually look at the flood as that awful event in which the whole world was completely wiped out. David puts the full emphasis on the fact that God saved a whole family, with representatives of the animal world from this catastrophe. We cannot really exaggerate the horror of the flood. How then must God have wept about this mass destruction! But how did God's smile, and His warmth, His kindness, and His goodness rest upon the ark and Noah, and his family! Noah must have felt the sweetness of God's presence. He was the first one to dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and he rested in the shadow of the Almighty; he was covered with His feathers, and under His wings he found refuge.10 Millions have shared this experience after him.
Noah's flood is comparable to an all-out nuclear war in modern times. If we can imagine ourselves and our family being spared in the midst of such a calamity, together with several hundred animals, we know how Noah must have felt. "The Lord is near"11 is no empty phrase. Yet, there are worse things than the deluge of Noah's time, or even an atomic war. When the flood of demonic powers breaks loose over this world in the days of the Antichrist, as John describes in the book of Revelation12, God's children will be as safe as Noah was, "Safe in the arms of Jesus." If this will be true during the worst period in all of this world's history, it is certainly true in the ordinary days of our present life. We live in a hostile and dangerous world, in which we will perish if we do not learn to find refuge under God's wings. This shelter is far more than a place that satisfies the minimum requirements for safety. It consists of feasting on the abundance of God's house, and drinking from the river of His delights. For a Christian there will always be bread, and meat, and water in the desert; there is the cloud and the pillar of fire to lead us on. In the verses 8 and 9, David does not describe heaven towards which we are traveling, but the earth upon which we live, which had been covered by the flood.
God's wings are mentioned several times in the Book of Psalms as a resting place for the soul.13 As a mother hen protects her chicks under her wings, so God offers us protection in fellowship with Him. Jesus used this same image when He said: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."14 This picture is a good illustration of what the Apostle Paul means when he says that we are "in Christ."
The NIV renders vs. 8 with "They feast on the abundance of your house." The word "abundance" is a translation of the Hebrew deshen, which, according to Strongs Definitions, means: "the fat; abstractly fatness, i.e. (figuratively) abundance; specifically the (fatty) ashes of sacrifices," and which the KJV translates with "fatness." In our modern, cholesterol conscious society the image seems inappropriate to describe the abundance of God's blessing, but for the Jews in the Old Testament, as is still the case with the Mountain tribes' people of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, the fat was the choice part of a meat dish. Tastes may have changed, but that does not take away any of the depth of the picture David paints. God feeds us His delicacies. The Lord refreshes and restores us with a stream of love and loveliness. "You give them drink from your river of delights." Lovingkindness and delights are both characteristics of God's being. Love is one of the most misused words in our vocabulary. In relationship to God, it is the strong love, the lovingkindness of His covenant with man. God surrounds us with the abundance of His house, because He loves us with an eternal love. If we recognize God's love for us in the abundance of His tender care for us, (which we do not always realize), we will experience this as the quenching of our thirst.
Describing Jesus' reaction to the news of Lazarus' sickness, John writes: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was."15 This teaches us that postponement of help can also be a proof of God's love. This, however, was not recognized as such by Lazarus' sisters until after his resurrection.
David makes a connection, in vs. 9, between life and light, as John does when he says: "In him was life, and that life was the light of men."16 The little word "for" in vs. 9 links this verse with the preceding ones. God's lovingkindness is a delight to us, and we find refuge in the shadow of His wings. We experience refreshing fellowship as a, because He is the fountain of life. What David says of God can be said of the life that is within us also, since our life is derived from Him. In Paul's words: "For in him we live and move and have our being."17 Life is good because it comes from God. It is a strange phenomenon that existentialists, who often deny the existence of God, often show more insight into the quality our life should have, than Christians do. Yet, we know this truth.
The fact that God is the source of our life makes us realize our dependence upon Him. We know how important it is that people who are on life-support remain plugged in. How much more important, then, is our fellowship with God! Life that is not lived consciously is not worth living. God is the fountain of our physical life, as well as of our emotional, mental, and spiritual life. Obviously, David puts the stress upon the spiritual aspect of this life; otherwise, he would not emphasize the loveliness of God's relationship with us. Our spirit is the organ with which we can exercise fellowship with God.
"In your light we see light" is a profound statement. Light is the essence of God's being. The Bible has a lot to say about light. John says: "God is light."18 We all know from experience what light is, yet, we cannot define light. Science has never been able to come up with a formula that defines light. The light we know is natural light; God's light is spiritual. That which we call "light" is, actually, an image of a spiritual reality. Our knowledge of light is mainly limited to sunlight. In the creation story in Genesis, the heavenly bodies make their appearance first on the fourth day. This means that God had already finished half of His creation before the sun is even mentioned. The light God created on the first day, therefore, was not the light of the sun. In the book of Revelation the sun is discharged of her duties, and God takes over her task. We read: "There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light."19
All this sounds rather strange to us, and it is hard to understand. The first lesson we learn is that the sun is not our only source of light, and not even the most important one. The real source of light is God Himself. That is why Jesus calls Himself "The Light of the World." And He says: "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."20 David uses light and life as poetical parallels. Sin steeps us in darkness, because by it we are cut off from the source of all light. Fellowship with God places us in the light.
How do we interpret the phrase: "In your light we see light?" We owe our capacity to observe natural light to the fact that God is light, but that is merely a superficial implication of the statement. Our fellowship with God changes the whole perspective of our life. Natural light provides sight, spiritual light gives us insight. "In your light…" stands, therefore, for fellowship with God. TLB gives the paraphrase: "Our light is from your light." If we walk in the light, we will see the light, and we obtain insight into the spiritual reality of God. It has been suggested that light stands for the glory of God. It is also true that, if we live in fellowship with God, we will know where we are going in our everyday life. Walking in the light is a growing experience. The Book of Proverbs says: "The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day."21
David concludes this psalm with the prayer that God's love and righteousness may continue for those who live in fellowship with God, and whose lives have been cleansed by the Holy Spirit. God's love and righteousness are eternal attributes, which do not need any confirmation to continue. In a sense, therefore, David's prayer is redundant. If we take this to mean, however, as a request that we, as human beings, always may be open to receive and experience those divine gifts of grace, it is a very meaningful prayer.
The end of the psalm confirms this interpretation. There are powers, which can prevent man from having an intimate fellowship with God. David represents those as "the foot of the proud," and "the hand of the wicked." This can apply either to demonic powers or human opposition. What he says amounts to the prayer: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."22
The psalm ends as it began, with the mention of sin. Vs. 1 depicts the beginning of sin in the heart of man; vs. 12 shows how sin has run its course and produced death. What the psalmist seems to say, is not that there are saints and sinners in this world, but that the dividing line between death and life runs through every human being. The contrast between the glory of God, who is the fountain of life, and the gruesome reality of sin, which produces death gives to this psalm a very dramatic character.