Are Christians Sinners, or are they not Sinners?
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WHY THEN DOES THE BIBLE SAY THAT CHRISTIANS ARE NOT SINNERS?
But at the same time, the Bible refers to Christians as holy, as saints, as righteous, as obedient, as people who do not sin. Let me draw your attention to the text in Psalm 26 that we read as we begun.
Here is a Psalm that I suspect is somewhat unfamiliar to us because in a certain way, I suspect, we don't believe it. I didn't, for a long time.
They would never say that nor dare to say that about themselves. They are sinners and they know it. But to say that they are blameless? No you have got to be kidding!
But are we right in that? Are we understanding David correctly? Is it true that Psalm 26 presents to us a form of words we should never use, and can't use as Christians? And as a result, is this Psalm really irrelevant? Is it largely useless to us? Is that the reason we don't memorize it? And when we read it, is that the reason why we quickly pass by and on to something else?
David identifies himself as a righteous, blameless man, and compares himself very favourably to unbelievers. Now the problem is immediately obvious, isn't it? Who among us would dare to say, "Vindicate me Oh Lord, for I have lived a blameless life, I have trusted in the Lord without wavering"? And then to make it worse, that thought is repeated at the end of the Psalm, it is a kind of “inclusion” -- a statement that comes at the beginning and comes at the end to identify what the theme of the Psalm. In between this Psalm, we find David saying that “… as for me, I shall walk in my integrity or my blamelessness." David is not only saying that 'he has' been blameless, but he is also saying that 'he shall' be blameless.
It sounds boastful. It sounds to us presumptuous. It sounds as though this man, David, indeed had a very inadequate view of himself. What of his many sins? What of his daily failures to love God and his neighbour with his heart and strength and mind? Paul had the honesty to admit that though he was most certainly a Christian, even an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, he nevertheless remained a daily sinner so much so that he could refer to himself as a bondslave of sin in Romans 7.
What man, who knows that about himself, is going to speak about how he has lived in obvious integrity and consider himself to be blameless? Or more to the point, what man who knows that he remains an inveterate sinner would appeal to God to vindicate him on the strength of his personal goodness, faithfulness and righteousness in life? Shouldn't our appeal be only to the righteousness of God and the righteousness of Christ? Should we ever appeal to our own righteousness?
In other words, it is usually believed that in Psalm 21, David is appealing to his justification by faith, as we who are on this side of the New Testament would describe it. Some people go further imagine that the righteousness and blamelessness that David is talking about in Psalm 21 is simply another way of referring to the fact that he is righteous before God because of Christ's righteousness that has been imputed and reckoned to him.
The Psalm is a description with specifics of David's life as he lived as a godly man in integrity. It is not the life of Jesus Christ that is being described here, wonderful and perfect as that life was. It is not the righteousness of the Lord Jesus imputed -- the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to him -- to which David is referring. David is referring to his own way of life: his behaviour, his conduct.
The Lord will find, he says, that David's life is as he has described it to be. David wants the Lord to judge his life, to measure it. He is sure that he will stand in God's judgment. He knows what his life has been: how he lived, what he has done, what he has refused to do.
As we read in verses 4 and 5, David knows he is not like other unbelieving men. He knows that there is a profound difference between them and him - and this difference lies in the way they both live. This is what David means when he says that he has been blameless. He lived as a believer ought to live.
Now, some people imagine that David would only speak that way because he lived in the epoch of the Old Testament. They are quite sure that that is not the way Christians would speak today. I think most of them, however difficult it may be for them to explain how this is so, think that what David said in Psalm 26 is the kind of thing an Old Testament saint might say, but we in the New Testament know better than to say it about ourselves having been taught of salvation by God's grace alone.
But the fact of the matter is, that the same outlook expressed in Psalm 26 is expressed again and again and again in the New Testament as well.
In the New Testament, there too you read of the difference between believers and unbelievers; even between believers and highly religious unbelievers.
Do you remember the beatitudes with which that sermon begins? They are a profile of the Christian character, and accordingly, a description of the Christian's behaviour. They are, as the Lord says very explicitly, a description of the kind of Christian who is a real Christian and is going to heaven. That sort of person, is poor in spirit, pure in heart, meek, merciful, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, a peacemaker, so committed to God that he or she is willing to suffer for Christ's sake; and then the sermon goes on to describe the daily living of a faithful follower of Jesus Christ and expresses that it is a life far better than the life of a Pharisee.
But that is just the beginning. Jesus said, you remember, that you would be able to identify His followers by the lives they lead, “by their fruit you will know them”.
Do you know how often in the New Testament Christians are described as saints, holy ones. So holy are their lives that John with a startling remark of qualification writes, "No one who abides in Jesus Christ keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen the Lord Jesus or knows the Lord Jesus. Little children, let no one deceive you, whoever practices righteousness is righteous just as He is righteous; whoever makes a practice of sinning, is of the devil.” This is a remarkable statement! How could John say that? And why didn't John immediately stop and say, "Now, lots of you have difficulty understanding that statement so, here is a little bit of an explanation...” John gives nothing like an explanation for this matter.
Paul, says in Romans 7, "I am a sinner". And John, in his first letter says, "No you are not a sinner". Every Christian, in other words, ought to be able to say, "I don't sin".
As you consider what I have just said, ask yourself this question: "When David says that he lived blamelessly or that he lived in his integrity, or when Joshua says in Joshua 14:8 that he "wholly followed the Lord his God; or when Job, repeatedly claimed to be blameless before the Lord; how are those statements different than Paul’s, who said at the end of his life in 2 Timothy 4:7 that, 'I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith'".
However David's statements in Psalm 26 struck you at first, the statement that David makes about himself, is in fact the same statement the Lord God makes about David later.
In 1 Kings 9:4, for example, the Lord says to Solomon as he begins his reign: "As for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and rules..." In view of what God says here about David, we know that David told the truth about himself in Psalm 26 because God tells us that that is exactly what David was; He affirms that that was the character of his life.
God said to David's son, Solomon, "Your father lived the right way, the righteous way. Now you must do the same."
Job who claimed to be blameless before the Lord was (as you will remember at the end of that book) vindicated by God.
Paul, sometimes, would recount his faithfulness to God, the things that he had done, the suffering he had endured on behalf of the gospel: particularly the public criticism of his ministry by his theological adversaries. In this context, Paul was telling his adversaries that “I am a righteous man and I have done the Lord's work blamelessly and with integrity that is effective”. That is what Paul says about his own life. This is the same Paul that tells us in Romans 7 that he continues to sin and sin and sin.
Or take one more illustration of this phenomenon in the Bible: how are these declarations of faithfulness to God such as we have in Psalm 26, different from the requirement we read in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 that an elder ought to be "a blameless man". It is possible for us, to live our lives in integrity, and to be blameless before God and before men.
Whatever we are to do with Psalm 26, we do not find a statement here that is not typical of the rest of the Bible. This way of speaking of believers and by believers is found everywhere you look in the word of God, which is to say, we Christians today have to reckon with David's claim that he was blameless. We have to agree that he lived in integrity, and we have to learn to speak in the same way about ourselves. There are some prayers in the Bible that we don't pray, perhaps primarily because we don't think we are supposed to pray them.
First, by saying that David was blameless and that he had walked in integrity, David isn't saying that he is sinless.
Not by any means. We not only have in the Bible the record of his checkered life, his sins as a husband, his sins as a father, his sins as an army commander; we have his own testimony to his continuing sinfulness; and how much of that sin there is in his life.
Here is the same David who wrote Psalms 26 in Psalm 38:3-4, "…there is health in my bones because of my sin for my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me."
Here is the same David who wrote Psalm 26 in Psalm 40:12, "For evils have encompassed me beyond number, my iniquities have overtaken me and I cannot see, they are more than the hairs of my head, my heart fails me.
Here is the same David who wrote Psalm 26 in Psalm 143:2, speaking not only of himself but of all men. "Enter not into judgment with your servant for no one living is righteous before you.”
However you take David in Psalm 26:1, when he is speaking of his integrity or his blamelessness, you cannot forget that at the same time, he was a man who was always deeply conscious of his own continuing sinfulness.
He had more sins than his sin with Bathsheba! And we find the same thing to be the case in the New Testament. However we read John's startling assertion that the true believer does not sin in 1 John 3, we cannot take it in a way that contradicts the statement that he made earlier on in the same letter in 1 John 1:8 where he says that "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us".
In the same way, we cannot take Paul's assertion that he had kept the faith and run the race and finished the course to mean that he was not a sinful man throughout the course of his Christian life.
In other words, here are the polarities again: A Christian is a sinner, and a Christian is not a sinner. Both are true when rightly understood. These are two truths that are very difficult to hold together, and the fact is, that explains why almost no one raises his hand when I say, "Can you say what David said in Psalm 26:1 that ‘I have lived a blameless life and walked in integrity before you and I have trusted in you without wavering.’"
Second, this attribution of righteousness, faithfulness and integrity is made in the context of God's gracious covenant with His people.
Psalm 26 is very clearly and emphatically a covenantal Psalm. It makes sense only as an expression of someone who was living his life in covenant with God.
In the covenant, you know, God extends to His people his mercy and His forgiveness as well as summoning them to a new life of obedience and service and that very clearly is the context of David's remarks throughout Psalm 21.
Some of David's righteousness, some of his integrity, is found precisely in the fact that he sought and secured the forgiveness of his sins precisely in that way God told him to obtain forgiveness. That too was part of his walking in integrity. I receive the forgiveness of my sins because I am seeking God's forgiveness in the way he has taught me to seek it.
In verses 6-7 for example, David paints a picture of himself at the sanctuary, participating in the worship at the altar. In verse 6, there is a reference to the laver, the large basin of water that stood between the altar and the sanctuary of God. In David's time, it was still a tent, it wasn't yet a building.
From the laver, the priest obtained the water with which they washed their hands and feet before approaching either the altar or the sanctuary. Now David could not have used water from the laver because he was not a priest. This waster was for the priests alone. So here, it seems to serve as a metaphor, a figure of speech, a way of describing his purity before the Lord, a purity that came not only through the obedience of his life but first and foremost, through the atonement, made on the altar, and all the other aspects of that sacrificial and ceremonial worship -- all of which as we know, prefigured the great sacrifice that would someday be made for sin by the Son of God.
What David is basically telling us in Old Testament language in Psalm 21:6-7 is that he was a man of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is where he sought the forgiveness of his sins, and that's where he found the forgiveness of his sins, and that’s part of his blamelessness and part of his integrity.
Again in Psalm 21:8, we read of David's love for the house of the Lord, which is another way of saying, his love for the worship of God that took place at the Sanctuary. We have the same idea in the last verse of the Psalm where he sees himself standing with the congregation at worship in the sanctuary.
A significant part of living in integrity and blameless before God, is availing one’s self of the blessing or the benefits that the Lord has for His people when they gather to worship Him there in the sanctuary with the people of God on the Lord's day. He confesses his sins and he receives their forgiveness. He lifts his heart in gratitude to God. He is reminded of God's great goodness to him and this is why he declares the praises of the Lord. There he hears the word of God and he is challenged in his faith and obedience. There he communes with the Lord over a meal and he is reminded of the extraordinary condensation and kindness of the Lord, to stoop down so far to welcome a sinful man like himself into fellowship and into His family. All of that too is David's walking in integrity just as surely as his obedience to God's commandments, he is separating himself from sinful men, his refusal, as in Psalm 21:10, to practice deceit, to cheat, or to lie: which sins are compressed in the giving and receiving of bribes which a man high in the government as David was, the king, is particularly tempted to do.
And you see all this once more and strikingly in verse Psalm 21:11 where he not only repeats his claim to walk in integrity as he has in the past and also in the future; but in the same breath, he asks the Lord to redeem him and be gracious to him. This is not a man who is depending upon himself, or who is speaking about the character of his life in tones of self-complacency and proud self-accomplishment; this was a man who was living in God's gracious covenant and walking with God as the faithful always have and will. Still sinful? Yes, of course. But really faithful and in that sense not sinful? Absolutely, as true believers always are.
What is this man saying, what is this claim? He is saying that he has been loyal to God's covenant. It is his life. It is his choice. He takes his stand with the Lord and with the Lord's people and with the Lord's word and with the Lord's law. He finds his strength in the worship of God and so he cherishes the Lord's house and he rejoices in every opportunity to keep God's commandments and so bring glory to his God and Savior. That is what David means by saying that he lived blamelessly and walked in integrity.
You see, the fact is, if you are a Christian, there is a great difference between your life and the life of an unbeliever. Your life is defined by God's Covenant. But that is not the case with the unbeliever. I think Christians, because they struggle with their sins and are disappointed by their sins, very often fail to realize what a universe separates them from those who are not followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and have not received God's grace and have not been turned into new creatures in Jesus Christ.
Your life is defined by God's covenant. The differences between you and unbelievers are obvious enough if we stop and we think about them, but if we track them down to their root, they are even more dramatic.
This is something we must not forget and I think, many of us, do forget it quite so often. You are, in the language of Scripture, a saint not a sinner. Your sin, real as it is, is not the defining characteristic of your life. It is your loyalty to God's Covenant that really describes who you are, and what you are.
When David asked the Lord to prove him or test him in verse Psalm 21:2, he is confident that when God takes a close look at his life, He is going to find precisely what David has said He will find. Obviously, sinlessness is not what the Lord expects to find. but covenant faithfulness and loyalty expressing itself in all the ways it will: conviction of sin, the desire to confess it, the sense of the need to have it forgiven, faithfulness and loyalty to God's word and God's law, real obedience to His commandments however imperfect, love for Gods house and God's name and God's worship and God's cause, confidence in the Lord's redemption and in his mercy -- all the things we have in Psalm 26.
The word prove or test, the first word of Psalm 26:2 is an interesting word. It is used originally of testing metals to find out how pure they are. In the ancient world, the only way to test the purity of a metal was by smelting.
A Babylonian king, Burnaburiash II, who reigned from 1367 to 1346 B.C. (shortly after the time of Moses), wrote to the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenophis IV: “Concerning the emissary you sent, the 20 minas of hold which he brought were not pure, for when it was put in the furnace, only five minas were produced.” [O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World, 183]
The 20 were actually 5 when all the dross was burned away.
That process here, in Psalm 26, becomes a metaphor for the testing of the heart and life. David is saying to the Lord, "When you test me in the smelter, you will find all 20 minas. They are not going to disappear when you put them in the fire. You are going to find a genuine Covenant man.”
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WHY THEN DOES THE BIBLE SAY THAT CHRISTIANS ARE NOT SINNERS?
But at the same time, the Bible refers to Christians as holy, as saints, as righteous, as obedient, as people who do not sin. Let me draw your attention to the text in Psalm 26 that we read as we begun.
Here is a Psalm that I suspect is somewhat unfamiliar to us because in a certain way, I suspect, we don't believe it. I didn't, for a long time.
- Can you claim before God that you have lived a blameless life?
They would never say that nor dare to say that about themselves. They are sinners and they know it. But to say that they are blameless? No you have got to be kidding!
But are we right in that? Are we understanding David correctly? Is it true that Psalm 26 presents to us a form of words we should never use, and can't use as Christians? And as a result, is this Psalm really irrelevant? Is it largely useless to us? Is that the reason we don't memorize it? And when we read it, is that the reason why we quickly pass by and on to something else?
David identifies himself as a righteous, blameless man, and compares himself very favourably to unbelievers. Now the problem is immediately obvious, isn't it? Who among us would dare to say, "Vindicate me Oh Lord, for I have lived a blameless life, I have trusted in the Lord without wavering"? And then to make it worse, that thought is repeated at the end of the Psalm, it is a kind of “inclusion” -- a statement that comes at the beginning and comes at the end to identify what the theme of the Psalm. In between this Psalm, we find David saying that “… as for me, I shall walk in my integrity or my blamelessness." David is not only saying that 'he has' been blameless, but he is also saying that 'he shall' be blameless.
It sounds boastful. It sounds to us presumptuous. It sounds as though this man, David, indeed had a very inadequate view of himself. What of his many sins? What of his daily failures to love God and his neighbour with his heart and strength and mind? Paul had the honesty to admit that though he was most certainly a Christian, even an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, he nevertheless remained a daily sinner so much so that he could refer to himself as a bondslave of sin in Romans 7.
What man, who knows that about himself, is going to speak about how he has lived in obvious integrity and consider himself to be blameless? Or more to the point, what man who knows that he remains an inveterate sinner would appeal to God to vindicate him on the strength of his personal goodness, faithfulness and righteousness in life? Shouldn't our appeal be only to the righteousness of God and the righteousness of Christ? Should we ever appeal to our own righteousness?
- What is the popular meaning of Psalm 21?
In other words, it is usually believed that in Psalm 21, David is appealing to his justification by faith, as we who are on this side of the New Testament would describe it. Some people go further imagine that the righteousness and blamelessness that David is talking about in Psalm 21 is simply another way of referring to the fact that he is righteous before God because of Christ's righteousness that has been imputed and reckoned to him.
- What is the Right interpretation of Psalm 21?
The Psalm is a description with specifics of David's life as he lived as a godly man in integrity. It is not the life of Jesus Christ that is being described here, wonderful and perfect as that life was. It is not the righteousness of the Lord Jesus imputed -- the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to him -- to which David is referring. David is referring to his own way of life: his behaviour, his conduct.
The Lord will find, he says, that David's life is as he has described it to be. David wants the Lord to judge his life, to measure it. He is sure that he will stand in God's judgment. He knows what his life has been: how he lived, what he has done, what he has refused to do.
As we read in verses 4 and 5, David knows he is not like other unbelieving men. He knows that there is a profound difference between them and him - and this difference lies in the way they both live. This is what David means when he says that he has been blameless. He lived as a believer ought to live.
Now, some people imagine that David would only speak that way because he lived in the epoch of the Old Testament. They are quite sure that that is not the way Christians would speak today. I think most of them, however difficult it may be for them to explain how this is so, think that what David said in Psalm 26 is the kind of thing an Old Testament saint might say, but we in the New Testament know better than to say it about ourselves having been taught of salvation by God's grace alone.
But the fact of the matter is, that the same outlook expressed in Psalm 26 is expressed again and again and again in the New Testament as well.
In the New Testament, there too you read of the difference between believers and unbelievers; even between believers and highly religious unbelievers.
- An Understanding of Psalm 21 in the Context of the New Testament
Do you remember the beatitudes with which that sermon begins? They are a profile of the Christian character, and accordingly, a description of the Christian's behaviour. They are, as the Lord says very explicitly, a description of the kind of Christian who is a real Christian and is going to heaven. That sort of person, is poor in spirit, pure in heart, meek, merciful, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, a peacemaker, so committed to God that he or she is willing to suffer for Christ's sake; and then the sermon goes on to describe the daily living of a faithful follower of Jesus Christ and expresses that it is a life far better than the life of a Pharisee.
But that is just the beginning. Jesus said, you remember, that you would be able to identify His followers by the lives they lead, “by their fruit you will know them”.
Do you know how often in the New Testament Christians are described as saints, holy ones. So holy are their lives that John with a startling remark of qualification writes, "No one who abides in Jesus Christ keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen the Lord Jesus or knows the Lord Jesus. Little children, let no one deceive you, whoever practices righteousness is righteous just as He is righteous; whoever makes a practice of sinning, is of the devil.” This is a remarkable statement! How could John say that? And why didn't John immediately stop and say, "Now, lots of you have difficulty understanding that statement so, here is a little bit of an explanation...” John gives nothing like an explanation for this matter.
Paul, says in Romans 7, "I am a sinner". And John, in his first letter says, "No you are not a sinner". Every Christian, in other words, ought to be able to say, "I don't sin".
As you consider what I have just said, ask yourself this question: "When David says that he lived blamelessly or that he lived in his integrity, or when Joshua says in Joshua 14:8 that he "wholly followed the Lord his God; or when Job, repeatedly claimed to be blameless before the Lord; how are those statements different than Paul’s, who said at the end of his life in 2 Timothy 4:7 that, 'I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith'".
However David's statements in Psalm 26 struck you at first, the statement that David makes about himself, is in fact the same statement the Lord God makes about David later.
In 1 Kings 9:4, for example, the Lord says to Solomon as he begins his reign: "As for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and rules..." In view of what God says here about David, we know that David told the truth about himself in Psalm 26 because God tells us that that is exactly what David was; He affirms that that was the character of his life.
God said to David's son, Solomon, "Your father lived the right way, the righteous way. Now you must do the same."
Job who claimed to be blameless before the Lord was (as you will remember at the end of that book) vindicated by God.
Paul, sometimes, would recount his faithfulness to God, the things that he had done, the suffering he had endured on behalf of the gospel: particularly the public criticism of his ministry by his theological adversaries. In this context, Paul was telling his adversaries that “I am a righteous man and I have done the Lord's work blamelessly and with integrity that is effective”. That is what Paul says about his own life. This is the same Paul that tells us in Romans 7 that he continues to sin and sin and sin.
Or take one more illustration of this phenomenon in the Bible: how are these declarations of faithfulness to God such as we have in Psalm 26, different from the requirement we read in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 that an elder ought to be "a blameless man". It is possible for us, to live our lives in integrity, and to be blameless before God and before men.
Whatever we are to do with Psalm 26, we do not find a statement here that is not typical of the rest of the Bible. This way of speaking of believers and by believers is found everywhere you look in the word of God, which is to say, we Christians today have to reckon with David's claim that he was blameless. We have to agree that he lived in integrity, and we have to learn to speak in the same way about ourselves. There are some prayers in the Bible that we don't pray, perhaps primarily because we don't think we are supposed to pray them.
- How should we understand and Apply Psalm 21 in our Lives?
First, by saying that David was blameless and that he had walked in integrity, David isn't saying that he is sinless.
Not by any means. We not only have in the Bible the record of his checkered life, his sins as a husband, his sins as a father, his sins as an army commander; we have his own testimony to his continuing sinfulness; and how much of that sin there is in his life.
Here is the same David who wrote Psalms 26 in Psalm 38:3-4, "…there is health in my bones because of my sin for my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me."
Here is the same David who wrote Psalm 26 in Psalm 40:12, "For evils have encompassed me beyond number, my iniquities have overtaken me and I cannot see, they are more than the hairs of my head, my heart fails me.
Here is the same David who wrote Psalm 26 in Psalm 143:2, speaking not only of himself but of all men. "Enter not into judgment with your servant for no one living is righteous before you.”
However you take David in Psalm 26:1, when he is speaking of his integrity or his blamelessness, you cannot forget that at the same time, he was a man who was always deeply conscious of his own continuing sinfulness.
He had more sins than his sin with Bathsheba! And we find the same thing to be the case in the New Testament. However we read John's startling assertion that the true believer does not sin in 1 John 3, we cannot take it in a way that contradicts the statement that he made earlier on in the same letter in 1 John 1:8 where he says that "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us".
In the same way, we cannot take Paul's assertion that he had kept the faith and run the race and finished the course to mean that he was not a sinful man throughout the course of his Christian life.
In other words, here are the polarities again: A Christian is a sinner, and a Christian is not a sinner. Both are true when rightly understood. These are two truths that are very difficult to hold together, and the fact is, that explains why almost no one raises his hand when I say, "Can you say what David said in Psalm 26:1 that ‘I have lived a blameless life and walked in integrity before you and I have trusted in you without wavering.’"
Second, this attribution of righteousness, faithfulness and integrity is made in the context of God's gracious covenant with His people.
Psalm 26 is very clearly and emphatically a covenantal Psalm. It makes sense only as an expression of someone who was living his life in covenant with God.
In the covenant, you know, God extends to His people his mercy and His forgiveness as well as summoning them to a new life of obedience and service and that very clearly is the context of David's remarks throughout Psalm 21.
Some of David's righteousness, some of his integrity, is found precisely in the fact that he sought and secured the forgiveness of his sins precisely in that way God told him to obtain forgiveness. That too was part of his walking in integrity. I receive the forgiveness of my sins because I am seeking God's forgiveness in the way he has taught me to seek it.
In verses 6-7 for example, David paints a picture of himself at the sanctuary, participating in the worship at the altar. In verse 6, there is a reference to the laver, the large basin of water that stood between the altar and the sanctuary of God. In David's time, it was still a tent, it wasn't yet a building.
From the laver, the priest obtained the water with which they washed their hands and feet before approaching either the altar or the sanctuary. Now David could not have used water from the laver because he was not a priest. This waster was for the priests alone. So here, it seems to serve as a metaphor, a figure of speech, a way of describing his purity before the Lord, a purity that came not only through the obedience of his life but first and foremost, through the atonement, made on the altar, and all the other aspects of that sacrificial and ceremonial worship -- all of which as we know, prefigured the great sacrifice that would someday be made for sin by the Son of God.
What David is basically telling us in Old Testament language in Psalm 21:6-7 is that he was a man of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is where he sought the forgiveness of his sins, and that's where he found the forgiveness of his sins, and that’s part of his blamelessness and part of his integrity.
Again in Psalm 21:8, we read of David's love for the house of the Lord, which is another way of saying, his love for the worship of God that took place at the Sanctuary. We have the same idea in the last verse of the Psalm where he sees himself standing with the congregation at worship in the sanctuary.
A significant part of living in integrity and blameless before God, is availing one’s self of the blessing or the benefits that the Lord has for His people when they gather to worship Him there in the sanctuary with the people of God on the Lord's day. He confesses his sins and he receives their forgiveness. He lifts his heart in gratitude to God. He is reminded of God's great goodness to him and this is why he declares the praises of the Lord. There he hears the word of God and he is challenged in his faith and obedience. There he communes with the Lord over a meal and he is reminded of the extraordinary condensation and kindness of the Lord, to stoop down so far to welcome a sinful man like himself into fellowship and into His family. All of that too is David's walking in integrity just as surely as his obedience to God's commandments, he is separating himself from sinful men, his refusal, as in Psalm 21:10, to practice deceit, to cheat, or to lie: which sins are compressed in the giving and receiving of bribes which a man high in the government as David was, the king, is particularly tempted to do.
And you see all this once more and strikingly in verse Psalm 21:11 where he not only repeats his claim to walk in integrity as he has in the past and also in the future; but in the same breath, he asks the Lord to redeem him and be gracious to him. This is not a man who is depending upon himself, or who is speaking about the character of his life in tones of self-complacency and proud self-accomplishment; this was a man who was living in God's gracious covenant and walking with God as the faithful always have and will. Still sinful? Yes, of course. But really faithful and in that sense not sinful? Absolutely, as true believers always are.
What is this man saying, what is this claim? He is saying that he has been loyal to God's covenant. It is his life. It is his choice. He takes his stand with the Lord and with the Lord's people and with the Lord's word and with the Lord's law. He finds his strength in the worship of God and so he cherishes the Lord's house and he rejoices in every opportunity to keep God's commandments and so bring glory to his God and Savior. That is what David means by saying that he lived blamelessly and walked in integrity.
You see, the fact is, if you are a Christian, there is a great difference between your life and the life of an unbeliever. Your life is defined by God's Covenant. But that is not the case with the unbeliever. I think Christians, because they struggle with their sins and are disappointed by their sins, very often fail to realize what a universe separates them from those who are not followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and have not received God's grace and have not been turned into new creatures in Jesus Christ.
Your life is defined by God's covenant. The differences between you and unbelievers are obvious enough if we stop and we think about them, but if we track them down to their root, they are even more dramatic.
This is something we must not forget and I think, many of us, do forget it quite so often. You are, in the language of Scripture, a saint not a sinner. Your sin, real as it is, is not the defining characteristic of your life. It is your loyalty to God's Covenant that really describes who you are, and what you are.
When David asked the Lord to prove him or test him in verse Psalm 21:2, he is confident that when God takes a close look at his life, He is going to find precisely what David has said He will find. Obviously, sinlessness is not what the Lord expects to find. but covenant faithfulness and loyalty expressing itself in all the ways it will: conviction of sin, the desire to confess it, the sense of the need to have it forgiven, faithfulness and loyalty to God's word and God's law, real obedience to His commandments however imperfect, love for Gods house and God's name and God's worship and God's cause, confidence in the Lord's redemption and in his mercy -- all the things we have in Psalm 26.
The word prove or test, the first word of Psalm 26:2 is an interesting word. It is used originally of testing metals to find out how pure they are. In the ancient world, the only way to test the purity of a metal was by smelting.
A Babylonian king, Burnaburiash II, who reigned from 1367 to 1346 B.C. (shortly after the time of Moses), wrote to the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenophis IV: “Concerning the emissary you sent, the 20 minas of hold which he brought were not pure, for when it was put in the furnace, only five minas were produced.” [O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World, 183]
The 20 were actually 5 when all the dross was burned away.
That process here, in Psalm 26, becomes a metaphor for the testing of the heart and life. David is saying to the Lord, "When you test me in the smelter, you will find all 20 minas. They are not going to disappear when you put them in the fire. You are going to find a genuine Covenant man.”
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