2 Samuel 22:20-30 - David's Psalm Of Thanksgiving.

God's righteousness in saving the righteous.

The facts are:

1 . David states that, in delivering him from his enemies, God recognized his uprightness and purity.

2 . He affirms that, as a matter of fact, he had in his conduct endeavoured to live according to the will of God.

3 . He declares the general truth that, in thus rescuing him the upright, and showing disfavour to the perverse persecutor, there was exemplified the principle of the usual Divine procedure.

4 . He ascribes the successes of the past, not to himself, however upright, but to God, his Light in darkness and his Strength for deeds of daring. There is, in David's references to his own righteousness and purity, an appearance of what is now called, self-righteousness. He seems to violate the primary canons of Christian propriety and to establish a doctrine of merit. But this interpretation of his words is an utter misconception of his meaning, and proceeds from an ignorance of the historical circumstances he had in mind when penning the words. It is a wrong done to personal experiences of the Old Testament to approach their interpretation with certain prepossessions based on New Testament teaching with reference to our personal unworthiness before God on account of our essential sinfulness. David was not speaking of his state absolutely before God; he was not thinking of the question as to whether he or any one else was a sinner. His sole thought was of the distinct charges brought against him by such men as Doeg the Edomite, and believed by the foolish king Saul; and he was conscious that his being hunted by Saul was a grievous wrong, a treatment he did not deserve. He was the righteous man, for he loved Saul, showed him kindness, and. paid him honour; Saul and Doeg and others in the conspiracy were the unrighteous men, uttering falsehoods, using cruelty, and cherishing malice. God came as Judge between them, and by interposition showed his delight in what his servant had been and done in this particular matter, and his displeasure with Saul for his wicked conduct. He vindicates the gracious interposition of God on the ground that it is a righteous and glorious thing on the part of God to rescue those who suffer unrighteously, and to declare, by his rescue of them, his delight in them as compared with the men who cause their sufferings (cf. 1 Samuel 21:7 ; 1 Samuel 22:9-13 , 1 Samuel 22:18-23 ; 1 Samuel 24:7-15 ; 1 Samuel 26:10-20 ). The vindication and illustration of God's righteousness in saving his people may be considered as follows.

I. THERE ARE SPECIAL INSTANCES IN WHICH IT MAY BE SAID THAT GOD SAVES THE RIGHTEOUS . In ordinary speech we say that God saves sinners. That is true in the sense that all men saved, whether temporally or spiritually, are, in their relation to him, sinful, or transgressors of the Law. But in relation to others and in relation to specific obligations which he may impose on them, they may be relatively righteous, and his saving them may be because they are so. Thus:

1 . Those who are righteous in life, as compared with others, are saved from calamity and suffering. Noah was a righteous man, and therefore was spared, while the Flood carried away the wicked. Lot was a righteous man in comparison with the Sodomites, and therefore was delivered by Divine pressure put upon him from the destruction which befell the rest. Some of the better Churches in Asia were not doomed to the woe that was to come on others, because God "knew their works" ( Revelation 2:1-29 ; Revelation 3:1-22 .). The more holy and devoted to Christ we are, and the more minutely our lives are regulated by the laws of God as written in his Word and works, and in our own mental and physical nature, the more shall we be saved from woes that come upon others who violate laws physical, moral, and spiritual.

2 . Those who suffer as being unrighteous, when all the time they are not so. This was the case of David, who was persecuted most bitterly by Saul on the ground that he hated his king and sought his life, when all the time he loved his king and guarded his life. It was as a righteous man in this particular that God saved him from distress. The same was true of Joseph in prison; of the Apostles Peter and Paul; yea, of our Saviour himself. And often still does God save his people from the reproach and sorrow brought on them by being represented as being other than they really are ( Matthew 5:11 , Matthew 5:12 ; 1 Peter 4:14-17 ).

3 . Those who conform to the gospel law of salvation. Before God all are sinners, and condemned by their own consciences as also by the broken Law. But Christ has made full atonement for sin, and now therefore God, in his sovereign grace, has laid down a new law for us to keep, based upon his acceptance of Christ's perfect work, namely, that we exercise faith in Christ as our atoning Saviour. We are not to try and keep the Decalogue as a condition of being accepted; we cannot attain to the righteousness of the moral Law. We are not to plead the value of repentance and a future life better than the past; all that is indefinite, uncertain. But we are simply to have faith in Christ as set forth in the gospel, that is all that God requires for our acceptance; that is the newly created law, the sum of all obligations in reference to obtaining justification before God. In other words, we are to attain to the "righteousness of faith," the righteousness which consists in fulfilling the obligation created by gospel grace, and then there is no condemnation: we walk then as freed sons in the glorious liberty of the children of God.

II. IN ALL THESE INSTANCES IT IS CONSONANT WITH GOD 'S NATURE TO SAVE THE RIGHTEOUS . God's treatment of Noah and Lot, and of all who keep his truth in the midst of prevailing degeneracy, marks his distinction of character on the basis of goodness. It is the Divine nature to love the good and hate the evil tendencies of men. When the persecuted are delivered, there is a vindication of character and a repressing of wrong which cannot but accord with God's natural love of justice. When he graciously accepts us on the condition that we have fulfilled all that he requires under the gospel order, and in our justification recognizes the "righteousness of faith" ( Romans 3:25-28 ; Romans 4:5 , Romans 4:6 , Romans 4:11 , Romans 4:13 ), he, accepting that kind of righteousness, that fulfilment of all obligation, maintains the honour of the violated Law under which we had lived, and glorifies the sacrificial work of his beloved Son. There is therefore nothing arbitrary in the "law of faith."

III. THESE SPECIAL INSTANCES OF SALVATION ARE IN ACCORD WITH THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF GOD 'S GOVERNMENT . David was quite warranted in saying that when God, in the matter of the deliverance from the persecutions of Saul, recompensed him according to his righteousness ( 2 Samuel 22:25 ), he was simply acting in harmony with his general kindness to the merciful and upright, and his stern and repressive ways of providence toward the perverse ( 2 Samuel 22:26 , 2 Samuel 22:27 ). The actual laws revealed in the Decalogue, in the civil institutions of Moses, in the precepts of the New Testament, in the constitution of the physical and mental worlds, all go for the good and against the wicked, whatever be the form or degree of the goodness or wickedness. It may be that, for reasons not yet made clear, the wicked triumph for a while and the righteous cry out in agony, "O Lord, how long!" but God's government is vast, intricate, and stretching far into the future, and there are forces at work by which at last the righteous shall be exalted and the wicked abased ( Psalms 5:4-6 , Psalms 5:11 , Psalms 5:12 ; Psalms 37:6 , Psalms 37:7 , Psalms 37:23-40 ).

IV. THOSE WHO ARE SAVED BY GOD ON THE GROUND OF RIGHTEOUSNESS LAY NO CLAIM TO MERIT . The object of David in this passage is not to proclaim his own deeds and claim a right to God's favour, but rather to set forth the righteousness and goodness of God in saving those who conform to his will. He had kept the ways, the statutes, and the judgments of God ( 2 Samuel 22:23 , 2 Samuel 22:24 ) in respect to his behaviour toward Saul,—he could honestly say that; and he considers it a matter of praise and glory to God that he manifested his love of what is just in coming to the rescue of such a one. To have allowed Saul to triumph would have been a reflection on Divine justice. In all this, therefore, there is no reference to merit in the sight of God, any more than Noah felt that he merited God's favour. It was in neither ease a question of the desert of the entire life, but of the state of the life in relation to other men. So in our personal salvation through faith, there is no claim of merit. It is all of grace. The "law of faith" is the creation of grace, and the heart to conform to it is of grace. The light in which we see spiritual things, and in which we rejoice, is not our own. The Lord is our Lamp, and he lightens our darkness ( 2 Samuel 22:29 ). If we are able to break through troops of spiritual foes, and leap over walls ( 2 Samuel 22:30 ) that hem us in, it is not because of our strength; it is only by our God, who of his free mercy supplies all our need.