Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.
Parallel Translations
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Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.
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Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
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(51-12) Create me a clean heart, O God; and renew a stedfast spirit within me.
Cross-references (25)
Passages linked to Psalms 51:10 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Ezekiel 11:19 I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh;
- 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
- Ephesians 4:22-24 that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
- Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
- Ezekiel 18:31 Cast away from you all your transgressions, in which you have transgressed; and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit: for why will you die, house of Israel?
- Romans 12:2 Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.
- Ezekiel 36:25-27 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness, and from all your idols. I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. You will keep my ordinances and do them.
- Acts 15:9 He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.
- Titus 3:5 not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
- 1 Peter 1:22 Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth through the Spirit in sincere brotherly affection, love one another from the heart fervently,
- Jeremiah 32:39 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their good, and the good of their children after them.
- Psalms 24:4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart; who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, and has not sworn deceitfully.
- Proverbs 20:9 Who can say, “I have made my heart pure. I am clean and without sin?”
- Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
- 1 Corinthians 15:58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
- Colossians 3:10 and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator,
- Psalms 73:1 Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
- James 1:8 He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
- Psalms 78:8 and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn’t make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
- Psalms 78:37 For their heart was not right with him, neither were they faithful in his covenant.
- 1 Kings 15:3-5 He walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him; and his heart was not perfect with Yahweh his God, as the heart of David his father. Nevertheless for David’s sake, Yahweh his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish Jerusalem; because David did that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes, and didn’t turn away from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.
- Jeremiah 13:27 I have seen your abominations, even your adulteries, and your neighing, the lewdness of your prostitution, on the hills in the field. Woe to you, Jerusalem! You will not be made clean. How long will it yet be?”
- Acts 11:23 who, when he had come, and had seen the grace of God, was glad. He exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they should remain near to the Lord.
- Joshua 14:14 Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he followed Yahweh, the God of Israel wholeheartedly.
- Ezekiel 36:37 “ ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “For this, moreover, I will be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them: I will increase them with men like a flock.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God!…
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God! In the previous part of the psalm David has been praying for pardon. He now requests that the grace of the Spirit, which he had forfeited, or deserved to have forfeited, might be restored to him. The two requests are quite distinct, though sometimes confounded together, even by men of learning. He passes from the subject of the gratuitous remission of sin to that of sanctification. And to this he was naturally led with earnest anxiety, by the consciousness of his having merited the loss of all the gifts of the Spirit, and of his having actually, in a great measure, lost them. By employing the term create, he expresses his persuasion that nothing less than a miracle could effect his reformation, and emphatically declares that repentance is the gift of God. The Sophists grant the necessity of the aids of the Spirit, and allow that assisting grace must both go before and come after; but by assigning a middle place to the free will of man, they rob God of a great part of his glory. David, by the word which he here uses, describes the work of God in renewing the heart in a manner suitable to its extraordinary nature, representing it as the formation of a new creature.
As he had already been endued with the Spirit, he prays in the latter part of the verse that God would renew a right spirit within him But by the term create, which he had previously employed, he acknowledges that we are indebted entirely to the grace of God, both for our first regeneration, and, in the event of our falling, for subsequent restoration. He does not merely assert that his heart and spirit were weak, requiring divine assistance, but that they must remain destitute of all purity and rectitude till these be communicated from above. By this it appears that our nature is entirely corrupt: for were it possessed of any rectitude or purity, David would not, as in this verse, have called the one a gift of the Spirit, and the other a creation.
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In the verse which follows, he presents the same petition, in language which implies the connection of pardon with the enjoyment of the leading of the Holy Spirit. If God reconcile us gratuitously to himself, it follows that he will guide us by the Spirit of adoption. It is only such as he loves, and has numbered among his own children, that he blesses with a share of his Spirit; and David shows that he was sensible of this when he prays for the continuance of the grace of adoption as indispensable to the continued possession of the Spirit. The words of this verse imply that the Spirit had not altogether been taken away from him, however much his gifts had been temporarily obscured. Indeed, it is evident that he could not be altogether divested of his former excellencies, for he seems to have discharged his duties as a king with credit, to have conscientiously observed the ordinances of religion, and to have regulated his conduct by the divine law. Upon one point he had fallen into a deadly lethargy, but he was not given over to a reprobate mind;” and it is scarcely conceivable that the rebuke of Nathan the prophet should have operated so easily and so suddenly in arousing him, had there been no latent spark of godliness still remaining in his soul. He prays, it is true, that his spirit may be renewed, but this must be understood with a limitation. The truth on which we are now insisting is an important one, as many learned men have been inconsiderately drawn into the opinion that the elect, by falling into mortal sin, may lose the Spirit altogether, and be alienated from God. The contrary is clearly declared by Peter, who tells us that the word by which we are born again is an incorruptible seed, (1 Peter 1:23;) and John is equally explicit in informing us that the elect are preserved from falling away altogether, (1 John 3:9.) However much they may appear for a time to have been cast off by God, it is afterwards seen that grace must have been alive in their breast, even during that interval when it seemed to be extinct. Nor is there any force in the objection that David speaks as if he feared that he might be deprived of the Spirit. It is natural that the saints, when they have fallen into sin, and have thus done what they could to expel the grace of God, should feel an anxiety upon this point; but it is their duty to hold fast the truth that grace is the incorruptible seed of God, which never can perish in any heart where it has been deposited. This is the spirit displayed by David. Reflecting upon his offense, he is agitated with fears, and yet rests in the persuasion that, being a child of God, he would not be deprived of what indeed he had justly forfeited.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain He confesseth that when God’s Spirit is cold in…
He confesseth that when God’s Spirit is cold in us, to have it again revived, is as a new creation.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Psa 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O…
Psa 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Ver. 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God] His heart was woefully soiled with the filth of sin and the work of grace interrupted; he therefore prayeth God to interpose and begin it again, to set him up once more, to rekindle those sparks of the spirit that lay almost quite smothered; to put forth his Almighty power for that purpose, to farm that Augaean stable of his heart; to sanctify him throughout in spirit, soul, and body; and to keep him blameless unto the coming of his Son 1Th 5:23.
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And renew a right spirit within me] Or, a firm spirit, firm for God, able to resist the devil, steadfast in the faith, and to abide constant in the way that is called holy.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Create in me a clean heart; seeing I have…
Create in me a clean heart; seeing I have not only defiled myself by these actual sins, but also have a most filthy heart, corrupted even from my birth, Psa 51:5, which nothing but God’s almighty and creating power can purify, do thou effectually work in me a holy frame of heart, whereby both my inward filth may be purged away, and I may be prevented from falling into such actual and scandalous sins.
Renew that good temper which before this apostacy I had in some measure, be pleased graciously to restore it to me with advantage.
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Right, Heb. firm, or constant, or steadfast, that I may not be so easily shaken and cast down by temptation, as I have been, but that my resolution may be more fixed and unmovable.
Spirit; temper or disposition of soul or spirit; as the word spirit is very frequently used in Scripture.
Within me, Heb. in my inward parts. He wisely strikes at the root and cause of all sinful actions.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Create in me a clean heart, O God,.... Which…
Create in me a clean heart, O God,.... Which was now defiled with sin, and of which being convinced, he was led more and more to see the impurity of his heart and nature, from which all his evil actions flowed; and being sensible that he could not make his heart clean himself, and that this was the work of God, and a work which required creating power, he entreats it of him: for as the first work of conversion is no other than a creation, or a production of something new, which was not before; so the restoring of a backslider, as it goes by the same name, it requires the same power; and as the implantation of grace at first, and particularly of faith, is a work of almighty power; so the same power must be put forth to bring it into exercise, after falls into sin; that it may afresh deal with the heart purifying blood of Christ, which only can make it clean, and is what is here meant;
and renew a right spirit within me; by which is designed, not the Holy Spirit of God (k); for he is the renewer; nor the spirit or soul of man as to its essence; but with respect to the qualities of it; and here it signifies a renewing of the inward man, or an increase of grace, and causing it to abound in act and exercise; and intends a spirit of uprightness and integrity, in opposition to dissimulation and hypocrisy; a spirit "prepared and ready" (l) to every good work, Mat 26:41; "one firm" (m) and unmoved from obedience to the Lord, by sin, temptations, and snares; a heart fixed, trusting in the Lord, and comfortably assured of an interest in pardoning grace and mercy.
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(k) Vid. Zohar in Gen. fol. 107. 3. (l) "paratum seu promptum", Gejerus, Michaelis; so Ainsworth. (m) "Firmua", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Create - Work in me an holy frame of…
Create - Work in me an holy frame of heart, whereby my inward filth may be purged away. Right - Hebrew. firm or constant, that my resolution may be fixed and unmoveable. Spirit - Temper or disposition of soul.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 10. Create in me a clean heart] Mending…
Verse 10. Create in me a clean heart] Mending will not avail; my heart is altogether corrupted; it must be new made, made as it was in the beginning. This is exactly the sentiment of St. Paul: Neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation; and the salvation given under the Gospel dispensation is called a being created anew in Christ Jesus.
A right spirit within me.] רוח נכון ruach nachon, a constant, steady, determined spirit; called Ps 51:12, רוח נדיבה ruach nedibah, a noble spirit, a free, generous, princely spirit; cheerfully giving up itself to thee; no longer bound and degraded by the sinfulness of sin.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Create in me a clean heart, O God -…
Create in me a clean heart, O God - The word rendered “create,” ברא berâ' - is a word which is properly employed to denote an act of “creation;” that is, of causing something to exist where there was nothing before. It is the word which is used in Gen 1:1 : “In the beginning God “created” the heaven and the earth,” and which is commonly used to express the act of creation. It is used “here” evidently in the sense of causing that to exist which did not exist before; and there is clearly a recognition of the divine “power,” or a feeling on the part of David that this could be done by God alone. The idea is, however, not that a new “substance” might be brought into being to which the name “a clean heart” might be given, but that he might “have” a clean heart; that his heart might be made pure; that his affections and feelings might be made right; that he might have what he was conscious that he did “not” now possess - a clean or a pure heart. This, he felt, could be produced only by the power of God; and the passage, therefore, proves that it is a doctrine of the Old Testament, as it is of the New, that the human heart is changed only by a divine agency.
And renew a right spirit within me - Margin, “a constant spirit.” The Hebrew word - נכון nākûn - means properly, that which is “erect,” or that which is made to stand up, or which is firm or established. It is used to denote
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(a) that which is upright, right, proper: Exo 8:26; Job 42:8; Psa 5:9;
(b) that which is right, true, sincere, Psa 78:37;
(c) that which is firm, constant, fixed.
This would seem to be the meaning here. He prays for a heart that would be firm in the purposes of virtue; that would not yield to temptation; that would carry out holy resolutions; that would be stedfast in the service of God. The word “renew” here means to be or to make new; to produce something new. It is also used in the sense of making anew, as applied to buildings or cities in the sense of “rebuilding” or “repairing” them: Isa 61:4; 2Ch 15:8; 2Ch 24:4. The word here would naturally convey the idea that there had been formerly a right and proper spirit in him, which he prayed might now be restored. The language is that of one who had done right formerly, but who had fallen into sin, and who desired that he might be brought back into his former condition.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Create--a work of almighty power.
Create--a work of almighty power.
in me--literally, "to me," or, "for me"; bestow as a gift, a heart free from taint of sin (Psa 24:4; Psa 73:1).
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renew--implies that he had possessed it; the essential principle of a new nature had not been lost, but its influence interrupted (Luk 22:32); for Psa 51:11 shows that he had not lost God's presence and Spirit (Sa1 16:13), though he had lost the "joy of his salvation" (Psa 51:12), for whose return he prays.
right spirit--literally, "constant," "firm," not yielding to temptation.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 10. Create in me a clean heart—The spiritual work,…
10. Create in me a clean heart—The spiritual work, heart renewal, is constantly before the royal penitent, and this is nothing less than a new creation. The word create is the strongest known in the Hebrew for bringing into being that which did not before exist, as Gen_1:1. Comp. Eph_2:10; Eph_4:24; and “new creation,” 2Co_5:17; Gal_6:15. The renewal of the heart by creative energy is a purely evangelical idea.
Right spirit—The word means a steadfast, established mind; one that could stand firm and resist temptation. See Psa_78:37
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 10. Create in me] Rather, Create me, i.e. for…
10. Create in me] Rather, Create me, i.e. for me. The word is used of the creative operation of God, bringing into being what did not exist before: and so in the parallel line renew should be rather make new (Vulg. innova better than Jer. renova). It is not the restoration of what was there before that he desires, but a radical change of heart and spirit. A right spirit should rather be a stedfast or constant spirit (Psa_57:7; Psa_78:37; Psa_112:7), fixed and resolute in its allegiance to God, unmoved by the assaults of temptation. Such a clean heart and stedfast spirit, the condition of fellowship with God (Mat_5:8), the spring of a holy life, can only come from the creative, life-giving power of God. Cp. the prophetic promises in Jer_24:7; Jer_31:33; Jer_32:39; Eze_11:19; Eze_18:31; Eze_36:26; and see 2Co_5:17; Gal_6:15; Eph_2:10; Eph_4:24.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (10) Right spirit.—So LXX. and Vulg.; but the constant…
(10) Right spirit.—So LXX. and Vulg.; but the constant of the margin is nearer the Hebrew, and better.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Create in me a clean heart, O God; i.e.…
Create in me a clean heart, O God; i.e. do more than purify me do more than cleanse me (ver. 7); by an act of creative power (arB) make in me a new clean heart. Compare the Christian doctrine of the "new birth" and "new life." And renew a right spirit within me. "Heart" and "spirit" are used interchangeably for the inward essence of man; but, as Professor Cheyne observes, "Heart emphasizes the individual side of a man"s life; spirit, its Divine, or at least preternatural side." David, in asking both for a new heart and a new spirit, requests the renovation of his entire mental and moral nature, which he recognizes as corrupt and depraved.
Prayer for a pure heart.
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"Create in me," etc. Human life belongs to two different worlds, distinct, yet inseparably interwoven the world of outward nature, and the world of inward experience. Since this psalm was written, amazing changes have passed on outward nature in relation to man"s life; but the world of inward experience is substantially unchanged. Even within half a century or less, human labour, discovery, and invention have so modified our relations to the globe we inhabit, and to the forces of nature, that we sometimes say we live in a different world. But the great inner world of joy and sorrow, love and hate, faith and unbelief, nobleness and baseness, holiness and sin, is the same in England to-day as in Judaea three thousand years ago. It has not ceased to be true that "As in water," etc. (Pro_27:19) There is still the same room and need for the prayer of the text. It is still true that it is a prayer which only the Spirit of God could inspire, can fulfil, or can interpret.
I A PRAYER WHICH ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT. COULD INSPIRE. How else can it be rationally accounted for? A prayer to God as Creator, for spiritual purity and rectitude: "a clean heart and a right spirit." Whence came these ideas? Still more, whence came these desires? It is easy to answer They were suggested by the purifications ordained by the Law of Moses; sprinkling with blood, with the water of purification in which the ashes of the heifer had been steeped, and "divers washings." But even supposing these rites could have originated the notion of inward purity and spiritual holiness, how could they create any corresponding desire? But, in fact, these spiritual ideas were the very meaning of those rites, for the sake of which they were ordained. (see e.g. Exo_19:5, Exo_19:10, Exo_19:11) It has been asserted by scholars, who ought to know better, that the original notion of sin, in the Old Testament Scriptures and among the ancient Hebrews, was merely ceremonial. The doctrine of the inward, spiritual nature of sin, and need of inward purification, was gradually developed, it is said, by the prophets. No assertion can be more baseless. Of all the words (not fewer than ten) used in the sacred tongue to express sin, not one originally refers to outward defilements; all are moral. The three principal occur in vers. 1, 2. (comp. Psa_32:1, 2 Exo_34:7)
(1) "Transgression," equivalent to "rebellion," viz. against God. (cf. 2Ki_8:20 for Hebrew word)
(2) "Iniquity," equivalent to "perverseness crooked and unjust thought or action.
(3) "Sin," equivalent to "error missing the mark. These are moral, not ceremonial ideas. The notion of pollution or defilement by crime was familiar among ancient heathen nations. But it was external, to be removed by outward ceremonies (see the story in Herodotus, 1:35-44). David felt that his heart, his spirit, his inmost self, needed cleansing and renewal, which God alone could impart.
II A PRAYER WHICH ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN FULFIL. David begins (vers. 1-9) by asking for Divine mercy; here he invokes Divine power. He uses the strongest term possible, "create." The same life-breathing Spirit who brooded over the dark waters at the first creation (Gen_1:2) must descend on man"s dark, sinful heart, and breathe life into it. (2Co_4:6 Eph_2:1, Eph_2:5, Eph_2:10) Our Saviour expresses the same great spiritual change as a new birth. (Joh_3:3, Joh_3:5-8) Thus the Old Testament here anticipates the deepest teaching of the New. But there is another side, equally recognized in Scripture. (Eze_18:31 Isa_1:16) As strongly in the New Testament. (Jam_4:4, 8 1Jn_3:3) God does not deal with men as machines or statues. God speaks to men, beseeches, warns, invites. Our Saviour did so, even to the very persons he described as closing their eyes, etc. (Mat_13:15) It is by the reception of Divine truth that the heart is purified, spiritual life conveyed. (1Pe_1:22 Jam_1:18 Joh_6:63) This cannot take place passively and unconsciously. Still, when all is said, life can come only from God. (Psa_36:9 Eze_11:19) David"s prayer goes to the central depth, the innermost need of our nature. Our reason is incompetent to reconcile these opposite views (Divine grace and human will); but St. Paul shows their practical harmony. (Php_2:12, 13)
III A PRAYER WHICH ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN INTERPRET, AND TEACH US TO MAKE OUR OWN. Inspiration is as needful to readers as to writers of the Scriptures; not the same, but as real. The inspiration of the writer of this psalm we do not need. Here is the psalm, perfect, unrivalled, unexhausted. But before David wrote it he prayed it and felt it. We need that inspiration which taught him to pour out this prayer into God"s ear. (Rom_8:26) "A clean heart." In the earlier part of the psalm, washing and cleansing are the images of forgiveness . (so Isa_1:8 1Jn_1:7) But here, of renewal, spiritual purity. (2Co_7:1) As the former prayer expresses sense of guilt, and desire for God"s favour; so this sense of the foul impurity and hate. fulness of sin, and desire for God"s likeness. See what follows.
REMARKS.
1. The utterance of this prayer with no sense of sin, no longing for holiness, would be mockery. If you feel you cannot honestly utter it, what you have to do is to ask that God"s Holy Spirit will teach and enable you. (Joh_16:8, Joh_16:9)
2. If this is truly your prayer, the Holy Spirit must have taught you. And the prayers he teaches carry the earnest of their fulfilment.
Vers. 10, 17. True prayer.
Prayer is the index of the heart. When true, it is the "heart"s sincere desire," and expresses not only the feeling, but the cry of the soul to God.
I THE PRAYER HERE IS THOROUGH-GOING. It is not pardon that is asked that has been obtained; but renewal. It is not present relief that is craved, but complete restoration, such a change wrought in the heart as is equivalent to a reconstruction, and as will re-establish and fix the right relation to God for evermore.
II THIS PRAYER IS FOUNDED ON GOD"S PROMISES. We should only ask for things agreeable to God"s will. Here we can have no doubt. What God wants is a "clean heart." What God delights in is "a broken and a contrite heart." When we look to ourselves, and remember God"s command, "Make you clean"; (Isa_1:16) Make you a new heart", (Eze_18:31) we are filled with despair. But when we look to God, and remember his promises, "A new heart will I give you", (Eze_36:26) hope springs up anew. God"s commands are not the commands of a tyrant like Pharaoh, (Exo_5:6-8) but of a Father great in love as in power. We should put his commands and his promises side by side, and then we have confidence that what we ask we shall receive.
III THIS PRAYER IMPLIES COMPLETE SELF-SURRENDER TO THE WILL AND WAYS OF GOD. God is sovereign and holy. He has his own ways of working. We must be brought low before we are raised up. We must be emptied of self before we can be filled with the fulness of God. There will be not only the Word which quickeneth, but the rod which disciplineth (ver. 8).
IV THIS PRAYER, FINALLY, LEADS TO A NEW LIFE OF LOVE AND OBEDIENCE. Life is made a sacrifice (Rom_12:1) offered, not on the altar of burnt offering, but upon the golden altar of incense; not as an atonement, for Christ"s blood alone maketh atonement, hut as a thanksgiving for redemption. W. F
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain Ver. 10. Create. What! has sin so destroyed us,…
Ver. 10. Create. What! has sin so destroyed us, that the Creator must be called in again? What ruin then doth evil work among mankind! Create in me. I, in my outward fabric, still exist; but I am empty, desert, void. Come, then, and let thy power be seen in a new creation within my old fallen self. Thou didst make a man in the world at first; Lord, make a new man in me! A clean heart. In the seventh verse he asked to be clean; now he seeks a heart suitable to that cleanliness; but he does not say, "Make my old heart clean; " he is too experienced in the hopelessness of the old nature. He would have the old man buried as a dead thing, and a new creation brought in to fill its place. None but God can create either a new heart or a new earth. Salvation is a marvellous display of supreme power; the work in us as much as that for us is wholly of Omnipotence. The affections must be rectified first, or all our nature will go amiss. The heart is the rudder of the soul, and till the Lord take it in hand we steer in a false and foul way. O Lord, thou who didst once make me, be pleased to new make me, and in my most secret parts renew me. Renew a right spirit within me. It was there once, Lord, put it there again. The law on my heart has become like an inscription hard to read: new write it, gracious Maker. Remove the evil as I have entreated thee; but, O replace it with good, lest into my swept, empty, and garnished heart, from which the devil has gone out for a while, seven other spirits more wicked than the first should enter and dwell. The two sentences make a complete prayer. Create what is not there at all; renew that which is there, but in a sadly feeble state.
Ver. 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God. O you that created the first heaven and the first earth of nothing! O you that will create the new heaven and the new earth (wherein dwells righteousness), when sin had made the creature worse than nothing! O you that creates the new creature, the new man, fit to be an inhabitant of the new world, of the new Jerusalem! O thou that hast said, "Behold, I make all things new:" create thou in me, even in me, a clean heart; and renew a right spirit within me. Matthew Lawrence.
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Ver. 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God, etc. David prayeth the Lord to create him a new heart, not to correct his old heart, but to create him a new heart; showing that his heart was like an old garment, so rotten and tattered that he could make no good of it by patching or piecing, but even must cut it off, and take a new. Therefore Paul saith, "Cast off the old man; "not pick him and wash him till he be clean, but cast him off and begin anew, as David did. Will ye know what this renewing is? It is the repairing of the image of God, until we be like Adam when he dwelt in Paradise. As there is a whole old man, so there must be a whole new man. The old man must change with the new man, wisdom for wisdom, love for love, fear for fear; his worldly wisdom for heavenly wisdom, his carnal love for spiritual love, his servile fear for Christian fear, his idle thoughts for sanctified works. Henry Smith.
Ver. 10. Create in me a clean heart. Creating, to speak properly, is to make of nought, and is here used improperly. The prophet speaketh according to his own feeling and present judgement of himself, as though he had lost all, and had no goodness in himself. No doubt the prophet's heart was in part clean, though not so much as he desired. These things thus opened, here cometh a question first to be answered. Quest. Whether David could have lost the cleanness of heart, having once had it? Ans. No. The gifts and calling of God, that is (as I take it), the gifts of effectual calling, are such as God never repenteth of or taketh away. Faith, hope, and charity are abiding gifts, as sure as the election of God, which is unchangeable. Indeed, the children of God, if we only considered them in themselves with their enemies, night fall away, but being founded upon the unchangeable nature of God, and immutability of his counsel, they cannot, the gates of hell shall not prevail against them, the elect cannot be deceived or plucked out of Christ's hands. Nay, certain it is that David did not actually leave his former cleanness. For sure it is, his heart smiting him (as here it did), so doing before in less matters, it was not wholly void of cleanness. And again, it could not pray for cleanness if it were not somewhat clean. This is most sure, that by grievous sins much filthiness cometh to the soul, as by a boisterous wind a tree may lose his leaves and some branches, so as that the party sinning may be brought into as great passions almost as if he had lost all, but the desire of grace is an infallible certainty of some grace of that kind. The prophet therefore desireth not a clean heart because he had it not in any sort, but because he could not so well perceive it in himself, and take such comfort in it as he had dome before, and for that he desired it a great deal more than now he had it. So learned, so rich men, think themselves not learned, not rich, in respect of that which they do desire, and when the sun is up, the moon seemeth to have no light. George Estey, in "Certain Godly and Learned Expositions, "1603.
Ver. 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God, etc. This "creation" is from nothing. David uses the same word of our creation which Moses uses of "the creation of the heaven and the earth." Our creation "in Jesus Christ" is no mere strengthening of our powers, no mere aiding of our natural weakness by the might of the grace of God, it is not a mere amendment, improvement of our moral habits; it is a creation out of nothing, of that which we had not before. There was nothing in us whereof to make it. We were decayed, corrupt, dead in trespasses and sins. What is dead becometh not alive, except by the infusion of what it had not. What is corrupt receiveth not soundness, save by passing away itself and being replaced by a new production. "The old man" passeth not into the new man, but is "put off." It is not the basis of the new life, but a hindrance to it. It must be "put off" and the new man "put on, "created in Christ Jesus. E. B. Pusey, D.D., 1853.
Ver. 10. (first clause). He used the word creat (Heb. Bara), a word only used of the work of God, and showing that the change in him could be wrought only by God. Christopher Wordsworth.
Ver. 10. A clean heart. The priest was required to make a strict examination of the skin of the leper before he could pronounce him clean; David prays God to make his heart clean. W. Wilson.
Ver. 10. A right spirit. A steadfast spirit, i.e., a mind steady in following the path of duty. French and Skinner.
Ver. 10-12. Who was to do this work? Not himself; God alone. Therefore, he prays: "O God, create--O lord, renew; uphold by thy Spirit." Adam Clarke.
Ver. 10.
1. The change to be effected.
1. A clean heart.
2. A right spirit.
1. The power by which it is accomplished.
1. A creative power, such as created the world at first.
2. A renewing power, such as continually renews the face of the earth.
3. The acquirement of these blessings. The prayer, "Create, "etc.
Psalms 51:11*
Ver. 10-12. Who was to do this work? Not himself; God alone. Therefore, he prays: "O God, create--O lord, renew; uphold by thy Spirit." Adam Clarke.
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Create in me a clean heart, O God; and…
Psa_51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
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A clean heart
I. The blessing asked for. It may refer to two distinct graces, conversion or entire sanctification. For when a man is converted there is still in him an inclination to evil, the struggle between the flesh and the spirit: his soul is not altogether pure. He has need of a more complete sanctification, of deliverance from all sin. And to this our text may be referred. A clean heart is one purified by the Holy Spirit from everything that is contrary to holiness. And it is also a constant heart. Renew within me a constant spirit--so may the words be translated. There is, then, the idea of constancy and establishment (2Co_13:9; 2Co_13:11; 1Pe_5:10). And there is no entire sanctification without it. The Spirit who inspired David with the prayer of our text is the same who dictated to the apostles the pictures of Christian virtues united together, which compose sanctification. David is persuaded that sanctification implies perfect sincerity: Behold, Thou desirest truth within; he knows that it comprises the wisdom which is the fruit of the instruction of the Holy Spirit: Thou didst teach me, or make me to know wisdom in the secret of my heart (Psa_51:6).
II. The dispositions from which the prayer of David proceeded. It is evidently a fervent prayer, which causes his whole being to rise towards God. But by what way he had been brought to make this request is not the essential thing for us to know. What is clear is that David had fallen very grievously; that his repentance was deep and painful; and that serious reflections on the inward cause of evil occupied his mind. It was his outward sin which obliged him to look within, and attentively examine the state of his heart and tendency to evil. It is as if he had said, What Thou ditestes is not only sin manifested without, but its inward principle; the sin which is hidden in the heart, and which is the cause of outward evil. The Christian cannot, indeed, have at first a perfect view of his inward pollutions. When conversion has been prompt and marked, when the sorrow for past sins has been deep, the agreeable feelings which succeed that sorrow as a consequence of our faith in Christ, the lively joy, the fervent love, check for a time the manifestations of evil. Sin is struck down and bruised; its power is broken. Perhaps God also, in His Fatherly wisdom and tenderness, does not permit His feeble child to see all his corruption from the beginning of his new life. That painful revelation might discourage him if it were made before his faith was strengthened. But if the evil is not yet evident, it is real; the light of the Holy Spirit will manifest it at the right time. And oh, what discoveries he speedily makes! What a mixture in his best actions, and in his whole life! What pride! What envy! What evil thoughts! What avarice! What a legion of other guilty feelings!
III. The most powerful encouragements to faith.
1. The fact that the Holy Spirit inspires that request is to you a sufficient proof that it is agreeable to God, and that He will hear it. Can you suppose that God would reveal to you the existence of a malady of which you could not be healed? Would He take pleasure in tormenting you by the view of impurity which He would not remove? Such a supposition would dishonour God. Courage, then, ye afflicted ones who heartily take part in the prayer of David, and say, O God, create in me a clean heart! That prayer itself is the pledge of your deliverance.
2. A further encouragement is found in the fact of God Himself delivering His Son to death for you. When it is well understood and felt, is it not a powerful motive to sanctification? Does it not make an irresistible appeal to our love?
3. But, further, the commandments of God enjoin upon us sanctification. Be ye holy; for I am holy. Does not every commandment imply a promise of grace to accomplish what it requires? I bind you, then, not to limit the Holy One of Israel. Wait to receive now the blessing of a pure heart. Begin to ask for it as you have never yet done. Seek it in tim spirit of Jacob when he wrestled with the Lord. (J. Hogart.)
Davids cry for purity
I. A remarkable outline of a holy character. He possessed the Holy Spirit, or he could not have prayed that that Spirit might not be taken from him. God had departed from Saul, because Saul had refused His counsel and departed from Him; and Sauls successor, trembling as he remembers the fate of the founder of the monarchy, and of his vanished dynasty, prays with peculiar emphasis of meaning, Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. A right spirit--a constant or firm spirit is the meaning. Then consider the third element in the character which David longs to possess--a free spirit. He who is holy because full of Gods Spirit, and constant in his holiness, will likewise be free. That is the same word which is in other places translated willing--and the scope of the psalmists desire is, Let my spirit be emancipated from sin by willing obedience. This goes very deep into the heart of all true godliness. And so the psalmist prays, Let my obedience be so willing that I had rather do what Thou wilt than anything besides.
II. Desires for holiness should become prayers. David does not merely long for certain spiritual excellences; he goes to God for them. There are some of you that are wasting your lives in paroxysms of fierce struggle with the evil that you have partially discovered in yourselves, alternating with long languor fits of collapse and apathy, and who make no solid advance, just because you will not lay to heart these two convictions--your sin has to do with God, and your sins come from a sinful nature. Because of the one fact, you must go to God for pardon; because of the other, you must go to God for cleansing. There, in your heart, like some black well-head in a dismal bog, is the source of all the swampy corruption that fills your life. You cannot stanch it, drain it, sweeten it. Ask Him, who is above your nature and without it, to change it by His own new life infused into your spirit. He will heal the bitter waters. He alone can.
III. Prayers for perfect cleansing are permitted to the lips of the greatest sinners. Such longings as these might seem audacious, when the atrocity of the crime is remembered, and by mans standard they are so. Let the criminal be thankful for escape, and go hide himself, say mens pardons. But here is a man, with the evil savour of his debauchery still tainting him, daring to ask for no mere impunity, but for Gods choicest gifts. Does not a prayer like this seem as if it were but adding to his sin? But, thank God, it is not so. Let no sin, however dark, however repeated, drive us to despair of ourselves, because it hides from us our loving Saviour. Though beaten back again and again by the surge of our passions and sins, like some poor shipwrecked sailor sucked back with every retreating wave and tossed about in the angry surf, yet keep your face towards the beach where there is safety, and you will struggle through it all, and, though it were but on some floating boards and broken pieces of the ship, will come safe to land. He will uphold you with His Spirit, and take away the weight of sin that would sink you, by His forgiving mercy, and bring you out of all the weltering waste of waters to the solid shore. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Purity
I. Inquire into the meaning of a clean heart, or the proper ingredients and expressions of such a temper of soul.
1. A fixed habitual abhorrence of all forbidden indulgences of the flesh. This is that which principally constitutes a clean heart; and from this all the other fruits and expressions of such a temper will proceed.
2. All past impurities, either of heart or life, will be reflected on with shame and sorrow (Jer_31:19; Eze_16:63; Eze_20:42-43).
3. A clean heart imports that the heart is actually freed in a good measure from impure thoughts and irregular desires; or at least that they are not entertained with pleasure and delight. He cannot be at rest till they are dispossessed and gone.
4. A clean heart discovers itself by a cautious fear of the least degrees of impurity. He dares not allow himself to go to the utmost bounds of things lawful, because he reckons himself to be then upon a precipice.
5. A clean heart necessarily implies a careful and habitual guard against everything which tends to pollute the mind (Pro_4:23). All loose and vicious company will be avoided as much as may be by those who have a clean heart. Intemperance will be carefully avoided by those who have an earnest concern to maintain their purity.
II. Represent the obligations that lie upon us to seek after such a purity of heart.
1. A ruling inclination to sensuality is directly contrary to the purity and holiness of the Divine nature.
2. Sensuality has a special tendency to extinguish the light of reason, and to unfit for anything spiritual and sacred.
3. Sensuality is most contrary to the design and engagements of Christianity. Our Lord inculcated the strictest purity upon all His disciples; not only an abstinence from gross outward acts, but from polluting thoughts and desires (Mat_5:27-30).
4. The blessed hope with which Christianity inspires us, lays us under a forcible engagement to present purity.
(1) Those of the contrary temper are absolutely excluded, by the express declarations of the Gospel, from the kingdom of God (1Co_6:9-10).
(2) On the contrary, the promise of the future blessedness is most plainly made to the pure in heart (Mat_5:8). (J. Evans, D. D.)
The uncleanness of the heart, and how it is cleansed
I. If the heart must be created anew before it can be a clean heart, certainly, before it is thus new-formed, it is an impure and unclean heart. And this that is here implied is frequently in the Scriptures directly affirmed (Gen_7:5; Jer_17:19; Mar_7:21). All the evils that are in the world are but evidences of the impurity of the heart, that unclean fountain and original of them.
II. wherein the uncleanness of the heart consists. A clean heart is such a heart as hath clean desires and affections; an unclean heart is that which hath unclean and impure desires, a heart full of evil concupiscence.
III. The causes of this uncleanness of the heart.
1. The impetuousness and continual solicitations of the sensual appetite, which continually sends up its foul exhalations and steams into the heart, and thereby taints and infects it.
2. The weakness and the defect of the imperial part of the soul, the reason and understanding.
IV. How it comes to pass that a heart thus naturally unclean is cleansed, which in general is by a restitution of the soul to its proper and native sovereignty and dominion over the sensual appetite; and those lusts that arise from the constitution of the body, and the connection of the soul to it. (Sir M. Hale.)
Reformation of heart the main thing needed
This is the main thing desirable, even purity and cleanness of heart, that God would bestow this blessing upon us. This is that which the Scriptures does abundantly commend unto us in sundry places (Psa_73:1; Psa_24:3-4; Mat_5:8). This cleanness and purity of heart is commended as the principal thing to be pursued by us, upon a double account.
1. As of the greatest eminence, considered in itself: The heart is the best part of a man; therefore there is cause for desiring of the cleanness of that above all the rest. As we see in an house, one would have all the rooms clean in it; but if there be any, better than another, some choice and peculiar chamber that we desire should be so especially. This now is the condition of the heart, it is the best room in all the house: it is best for the constitution of it; and therefore it should be best likewise for the qualification: it is best for its use and employment, and therefore it should be best likewise for its ordering and disposition: that which is the best of us, should be the best in us. We value rooms according to the guests which we entertain into them; and this is the pre-eminence of the heart, wherein God Himself takes special delight to dwell, and to reside; and therefore we should take special care for the cleaning of it, not to put such a worthy guest and friend as He is into a foul and impure lodging: the heart should be clean for its eminence.
2. It should be so also for its influence; and according to this sense especially are we to take it here in this place, in this desire of David. He was now upon the business of repentance, and amendment of life, to set upon a new course of life over what he had of late taken up; and now see here where he lays the groundwork and foundation of such a business as this, namely, in the cleansing of his heart--Create in me a clean heart, O God; he begins with that; this is the spring and fountain of all amendment and reformation whatsoever. They that desire to reform their lives, they must endeavour to reform their hearts; they must labour to have right spirits in them, or else all will be in vain unto them, whatsoever they apply themselves to as concerning this matter. The reason of it is clear, because the heart is the original and spring of all evil, as our Saviour Himself hath told us (Mar_7:21). (Thomas Horton, D. D.)
A clean heart
Heart comprehends not only feeling, but intellect and will. It suggests the impulsive; the sphere of the emotions and sympathy, of hatred and of love. It suggests the directive; the realm of plans and of judgment, the sphere and home of thought. It suggests the executive; the power which prosecutes purpose, the forces of persistence and resistance; the offensive and defensive energies of the life. The dominion of the heart is inclusive of the threefold sovereignty of emotion, intellect and will. A clean heart is, therefore, very much more than refined and sensitive feeling. It is also inclusive of illumined and clarified discernment; of healthy and wholesome will. Create within me a clean heart is a very wealthy and comprehensive prayer; make my feelings like clean fire, make my thought like a sea of glass. Make my will like a loyal soldier, incapable of mutiny. How is this splendid aim to be gained? By an act of creation. Create in me a pure heart, O God. There is something in creation that is revolutionary: it is the gift of a seed. John Stuart Mill said that a revolutionary force entered into his life on the day he came to know the lady who was afterwards to be his wife. The experience is a commonplace in ordinary life. Intimacies mark the beginnings of revolutions. A father says, It was a bad day when my lad became intimate with such a one, and he mentions the name with bitterness and shame. But why a bad day? A revolutionary force got hold of him, bad principle possessed him. The seed of devilry was implanted, which worked itself out in all manner of unworthiness and sin. The first step in the creation of devilry is to become related to one. On the good side and on the bad the revolutionary in life is occasioned by the establishment of a new relationship. The first requisite in the creation of the Godlike life is relationship with God. Life is revolutionized when man comes into conscious communion with his Maker. Let me illustrate. Here is a reservoir supplying the needs of a great town. The waters become poisoned and defiled. The vast mains become the agents of destruction, the vehicles and purveyors of disease. Epidemics break out. Pestilence abounds. Let me assume that on pure and unpolluted heights there are discovered unmeasured resources of water, clean and undefiled. Let us assume that we could connect the corrupted mains with the clean and wholesome flood. The linking of the two would be the beginning of a revolution. The epidemic would not be obliterated in a day, even with the opening of the crystal flood. But in the revolution would be the potency of health. And here am I, a member of a race, down whose waterways flow currents of diluted and defiled life. That truth is not only proclaimed in the Scripture, it is the doctrine of modern science. One calls it the legacy of Adam, the other the bequest of heredity. In Adam all die; the elements of corruption are transmitted; the reservoir from which I drink has been defiled. Now let us assume that I could become related to some reservoir in the heights, some pure river of water of life. How then? What I bespeak as an assumption has been proclaimed as a gospel. I can change the reservoirs; as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The heredity can be changed; heirs of Adam, we can become heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. The first element in the new creation is a new relation. We become new creatures when we become one with Christ. The revolution is succeeded by evolution. Becoming the heir of God, and joint-heir with Christ, I am subjected to a discipline which is intended to develop all the wealth of my inner life. The discipline is intended to discharge the twofold ministry of instruction and chastening. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.)
Reformation must begin at the heart
A reformation which beginneth at the members and external actions is neither true nor constant. As if a man intending to dress his garden, and purge it from thistles and such-like weeds, would cut off the upper part and leave the roots, which would spring up again: so if thou wouldest chastise thy body and let thine heart remain luxurious, it is nothing. The heart is the fountain, wherefrom springeth all evil, the root from which all sin groweth. He speaketh not of the substance but of the affections and qualities of the heart. No honest man will lodge in a filthy house, or drink or eat except the vessel be made clean; and God cannot abide in a foul, swinish heart. Keep thine heart diligently, saith the Spirit. As a vessel of gold or silver being through long use wasted and broken, is sent to the goldsmiths to be renewed, so our hearts worn by sin must be sent to God, that He may put them in the fire, end east them in a new mould, and make them up again. Alas, that we are careful to renew everything, clothes, vessels and all, only careless to renew our hearts. (A. Symson.)
Renew a right spirit within me.
Gracious renewal
I. There is absolutely necessity for Gods renewal of us if we would persevere.
1. Nothing that God has made is self-existent. Not the angels even. The very mountains crumble, and the great rivers have to be perpetually refilled from the mountain snows.
2. This is especially true of all wherein life is. Jobs war-horse, whose neck is clothed with thunder, must humble himself to his stall and to his provender. Samson himself must have a cleft opened in the rock that he may drink, for though he has slain the Philistines, yet will he perish if his thirst be not quenched.
3. Your own inner consciousness says the same. What downward tendencies there are in us all. We could travel down-hill to hell easily, but upwards to heaven how hardly!
4. And if we will not see this we may be made to, and that terribly, by some surprising sin. See the occasion of this psalm.
5. Unconscious backsliding from God will certainly be upon us unless we experience the renewals of Gods Spirit. The Church has rest now-a-days, and is where Pilgrim was when he went through the enchanted ground, and the air was heavy, and he had much ado to keep himself from sleeping. Perhaps it is a truthless legend that the holidays of Capua ruined the veterans of Hannibal, but if it be a legend in his case, it is a fact in ours. Therefore we do need to pray, Renew a right spirit within me. And because of--
II. Our own powerlessness to do this. Without me, said our Lord, we can do nothing; but we do not fully know all that means. When a ship is in sailing order and in good condition, yet she cannot speed on her voyage of herself: even though the sails be spread, there is no hope of her making her port unless the wind shall blow. For to renew a soul is as when Christ called forth Lazarus from the grave: it is to go directly opposite to nature. Who can make water run up-hill, or suspend the cataract in mid-air? Every grace is wanted that was needed in our first conversion. Then pray this prayer, but pray it not falsely, as you will if you use not the means through which God works. He is a hypocrite who asks the Lord to visit him and then nails up his door.
III. The blessed results of such renewal--this another argument for our praying this prayer. What joy, what activity, how useful you will be: how light will be the load of this worlds trials.
IV. Remember gospel obligations to renew our covenant with God.
1. It was well for you at the first to make this covenant.
2. Jesus often renews it with us, and--
3. All He has done for us binds us to it. You that have gone astray, pray this prayer. If the Church for thy backslidings has had to cast thee out, if there be still a desire in thy soul to return, Christ waits for thee. And whoever we be, young or old, men or women struggling amid the worlds cares, or young men and maidens, or young children, come now and renew your vows unto God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A right spirit
1. By spirit we are to understand either the rational part distinct from the animal, or (which I rather incline to) the rational part in the refinings of it; the more eminent and divine ray of understanding and will; the mind of the mind and the soul of the soul. If there be any part better than other, to be still better in that; not only in the body, but so much the more in the soul; and not only in the soul and mind, but so much the rather in the spirit of it, which is the bent and bias of the mind, the vigour and activity of it, he would be best in that. Now, accordingly, we should ourselves endeavour hereunto likewise. There are none which are so wicked as those which are spiritually wicked; nor none which are so good as those which are spiritually good. Look by how much grace and holiness does at any time take hold on our spirits, so much the better still we are.
2. The second is what is meant by right.
(1) In this expression David desires an even carriage of heart, that is, a right spirit, neither turning to the right hand nor to the left, but equally poised and ballasted in him: and so he does hereby show us what is likewise desirable of ourselves, even integrity and uprightness of spirit.
(2) A firmness of purpose; our heart settled and resolved. This is very requisite and necessary for us in these regards.
(a) In regard of the excellency of the things themselves which are here commended to us: the better anything is, the more cause have we to be resolved upon it, and constant to it.
(b) In regard of the natural inconstancy of our own hearts: the more uncertain we are of ourselves, the greater need have we to make ourselves sure by a fixedness and constancy of resolution, and thereby as it were to bind ourselves up.
(e) In regard of the manifold temptations and attempts which are upon us to take us off. There are so many baits laid to unsettle us, that unless we peremptorily determine ourselves, we shall never be sure; we have many assaults upon us to shake us, and to make us let go our hold, for which cause we have need to endeavour after this constant spirit. (Thomas Horton, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Psa 51:10 - Psa 51:12.
Psalms
DAVID’S CRY FOR PURITY
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Psa 51:10 - Psa 51:12.
We ought to be very thankful that the Bible never conceals the faults of its noblest men. David stands high among the highest of these. His words have been for ages the chosen expression for the devotions of the holiest souls; and whoever has wished to speak longings after purity, lowly trust in God, the aspirations of love, or the raptures of devotion, has found no words of his own more natural than those of the poet-king of Israel. And this man sins, black, grievous sin. Self-indulgent, he stays at home while his army is in the field. His moral nature, relaxed by this shrinking from duty, is tempted, and easily conquered. The sensitive poet nature, to which all delights of eye and sense appeal so strongly, is for a time too strong for the devout soul. One sin drags on another. As self-indulgence opened the door for lust, so lust, which dwells hard by hate, draws after it murder. The king is a traitor to his subjects, the soldier untrue to the chivalry of arms, the friend the betrayer of the friend. Nothing can be blacker than the whole story, and the Bible tells the shameful history in all its naked ugliness.
Many a precious lesson is contained in it. For instance, It is not innocence which makes men good. ‘This is your man after God’s own heart, is it?’ runs the common, shallow sneer. Yes; not that God thought little of his foul sin, nor that ‘saints’ make up for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms; not that ‘righteousness’ as a standard of conduct is lower than ‘morality’; but that, having fallen, he learned to abhor his sin, and with deepened trust in God’s mercy, and many tears, struggled out of the mire, and with unconquered resolve and strength drawn from a divine source, sought still to press towards the mark. It is not the attainment of purity, not the absence of sin, but the presence and operation, though it be partial, of an energy which is at war with all impurity, that makes a man righteous. That is a lesson worth learning.
Again, David was not a hypocrite because of this fall of his. All sin is inconsistent with a religious character. But it is not for us to say what sin is incompatible with a religious character.
Again, the worst sin is not some outburst of gross transgression, forming an exception to the ordinary tenor of a life, bad and dismal as such a sin is; but the worst and most fatal are the small continuous vices, which root underground and honeycomb the soul. Many a man who thinks himself a Christian, is in more danger from the daily commission, for example, of small pieces of sharp practice in his business, than ever was David at his worst. White ants pick a carcase clean sooner than a lion will.
Most precious of all is the lesson as to the possibility of all sin being effaced, and of the high hopes which even a man sunk in transgression has a right to cherish, as to the purity and beauty of character to which he may come. What a prayer these clauses contain to be offered by one who has so sinned! What a marvellous faith in God’s pardoning love, and what a boldness of hope in his own future, they disclose! They set forth a profound ideal of a noble character; they make of that ideal a prayer; they are the prayer of a great transgressor, who is also a true penitent. In all these aspects they are very remarkable, and lead to valuable lessons. Let us look at them from these points of view successively.
I. Observe that here is a remarkable outline of a holy character.
It is to be observed that of these three gifts-a right spirit, Thy Holy Spirit, a free spirit-the central one alone is in the original spoken of as God’s; the ‘Thy’ of the last clause of the English Bible being an unnecessary supplement. And I suppose that this central petition stands in the middle, because the gift which it asks is the essential and fundamental one, from which there flow, and as it were, diverge on the right hand and on the left, the other two. God’s Holy Spirit given to a man makes the human spirit holy, and then makes it ‘right’ and ‘free.’ Look then at the petitions, not in the order in which they stand in the text, but in the order which the text indicates as the natural one.
Now as to that fundamental petition, ‘Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me,’ one thing to notice is that David regards himself as possessing that Spirit. We are not to read into this psalm the fully developed New Testament teaching of a personal Paraclete, the Spirit whom Christ reveals and sends. To do that would be a gross anachronism. But we are to remember that it is an anointed king who speaks, on whose head there has been poured the oil that designated him to his office, and in its gentle flow and sweet fragrance, symbolised from of old the inspiration of a divine influence that accompanied every divine call. We are to remember, too, how it had fared with David’s predecessor. Saul had been chosen by God; had been for a while guided and upheld by God. But he fell into sin, and-not because he fell into it, but because he continued in it; not because he did wrong, but because he did not repent-the solemn words are recorded concerning him, that ‘the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.’ The divine influence which came on the towering head of the son of Kish, through the anointing oil that Samuel poured upon his raven hair, left him, and he stood God-forsaken because he stood God-forsaking. And so David looks back from the ‘horrible pit and miry clay’ into which he had fallen, where, stained with blood and lust, he lies, to that sad gigantic figure, remembered so well and loved by him so truly-the great king who sinned away his soul, and bled out his life on the heights of Gilboa. He sees in that blasted pine-tree, towering above the forest but dead at the top, and barked and scathed all down the sides by the lightning scars of passion, the picture of what he himself will come to, if the blessing that was laid upon his ruddy locks and his young head by the aged Samuel’s anointing should pass from him too as it had done from his predecessor. God had departed from Saul, because Saul had refused His counsel and departed from Him; and Saul’s successor, trembling as he remembers the fate of the founder of the monarchy, and of his vanished dynasty, prays with peculiar emphasis of meaning, ‘Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me!’
That Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, had descended upon him when he was anointed king, but it was no mere official consecration which he had thereby received. He had been fitted for regal functions by personal cleansing and spiritual gifts. And it is the man as well as the king, the sinful man much rather than the faulty king, that here wrestles with God, and stays the heavenly Visitant whom his sin has made to seem as if He would depart. What he desires most earnestly, next to that pardon which he has already sought and found, is that his spirit should be made holy by God’s Spirit. That is, as I have said, the central petition of his threefold prayer, from which the others come as natural consequences.
And what is this ‘holiness’ which David so earnestly desires? Without attempting any lengthened analysis of the various shades of meaning in the word, our purpose will be served if I point out that in all probability the primary idea in it is that of separation. God is holy-that is, separated by all the glory of His perfect nature from His creatures. Things are holy-that is, separated from common uses, and appropriated to God’s service. Whatever He laid His hand on and claimed in any especial manner for His, became thereby holy, whether it were a ceremony, or a place, or a tool. Men are holy when they are set apart for God’s service, whether they be officially consecrated for certain offices, or have yielded themselves by an inward devotion based on love to be His.
The ethical signification which is predominant in our use of the word and has made it little more than a synonym for moral purity is certainly not the original meaning, as is sufficiently clear from the fact that the word is applied to material things which could have no moral qualities, and sometimes to persons who were not pure, but who were in some sense or other set apart for God’s service. But gradually that meaning becomes more and more completely attached to the word, and ‘holiness’ is not only separation for God, but separation from sin. That is what David longs for in this prayer; and the connection of these two meanings of the word is worth pointing out in a sermon, for the sake of the great truth which it suggests, that the basis of all rightness and righteousness in a human spirit is its conscious and glad devotion to God’s service and uses. A reference to God must underlie all that is good in men, and on the other hand, that consecration to God is a delusion or a deception which does not issue in separation from evil.
‘Holiness’ is a loftier and a truer word than ‘morality,’ ‘virtue,’ or the like; it differs from these in that it proclaims that surrender to God is the very essence of all good, while they seek to construct a standard for human conduct, and to lay a foundation for human goodness, without regard to Him. Hence, irreligious moralists dislike the very word, and fall back upon pale, colourless phrases rather than employ it. But these are inadequate for the purpose. Man’s duties can never be summed up in any expression which omits man’s relation to God. How do I stand to Him? Do I belong to Him by joyous yielding of myself to be His instrument? That, my friends! is the question, the answer to which determines everything about me. Rightly answered, there will come all fruits of grace and beauty in the character as a natural consequence; ‘whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,’ every virtue and every praise grow from the root of consecration to God. Wrongly answered, there will come only fruits of selfishness and evil, which may simulate virtue, but the blossom shall go up in dust, and the root in stubble. Do you seek purity, nobleness, strength, and beauty of soul? Learn that all these inhere in and flow from the one act of giving up yourself to God, and in their truest perfection are found only in the spirit that is His. Holiness considered as moral excellence is the result of holiness considered as devotion to God. And learn too that holiness in both aspects comes from the operation and indwelling in our spirits of a divine Spirit, who draws away our love from self to fix it on Him, which changes our blindness into sight, and makes us by degrees like Himself, ‘holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.’ The Spirit of the Lord is the energy which produces all righteousness and purity in human spirits.
Therefore, all our desires after what is good and true should shape themselves into the desire for that Spirit. Our prayer should be, ‘Make me separate from evil, and that I may be so, claim and keep me for Thine own. As Thou hast done with the Sabbath amongst the days, with the bare summit of the hill of the Lord’s house among the mountains, with Israel amidst the nations, so do with me; lay Thine hand upon me for Thine own. Let my spirit, O God! know its destination for Thee, its union with Thee. Then being Thine, it will be clean. Dwell in me, that I may know myself Thine. Seal me with that gracious influence which is the proof that Thou possessest me, and the pledge that I possess Thee. “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.”‘ So much for the chief of these petitions, which gives the ideal character in its deepest relations. There follow two other elements in the character, which on either side flow from the central source. The holy spirit in a man will be a right spirit and a free spirit. Consider these further thoughts in turn.
‘A right spirit.’ You will observe that our translators have given an alternative rendering in the margin, and as is not seldom the case, it is a better one than that adopted in the text. ‘A constant or firm spirit’ is the Psalmist’s meaning. He sees that a spirit which is conscious of its relation to God, and set free from the perturbations of sin, will be a spirit firm and settled, established and immovable in its obedience and its faith. For Him, the root of all steadfastness is in consecration to God.
And so this collocation of ideas opens the way for us to important considerations bearing upon the practical ordering of our natures and of our lives. For instance, there is no stability and settled persistency of righteous purpose possible for us, unless we are made strong because we lay hold on God’s strength, and stand firm because we are rooted in Him. Without that hold-fast, we shall be swept away by storms of calamity or by gusts of passion. Without that to steady us, our own boiling lusts and desires will make every fibre of our being quiver and tremble. Without that armour, there will not be solidity enough in our character to bear without breaking the steady pressure of the world’s weight, still less the fierce hammering of special temptation. To stand erect, and in that sense to have a right spirit-one that is upright and unbent-we must have sure footing in God, and have His energy infused into our shrinking limbs. If we are to be stable amidst earthquakes and storms, we must be built on the rock, and build rock-like upon it. Build thy strength upon God. Let His Holy Spirit be the foundation of thy life, and then thy tremulous and vagrant soul will be braced and fixed. The building will become like the foundation, and will grow into ‘a tower of strength that stands four-square to every wind.’ Rooted in God, thou shalt be unmoved by ‘the loud winds when they call’; or if still the tremulous leaves are huddled together before the blast, and the swaying branches creak and groan, the bole will stand firm and the gnarled roots will not part from their anchorage, though the storm-giant drag at them with a hundred hands. The spirit of holiness will be a firm spirit.
But there is another phase of connection between these two points of the ideal character-if my spirit is to be holy and to preserve its holiness, it must be firm. That is to say, you can only get and keep purity by resistance. A man who has not learned to say ‘No!’-who is not resolved that he will take God’s way in spite of every dog that can bay or bark at him, in spite of every silvery voice that woos him aside-will be a weak and a wretched man till he dies. In such a world as this, with such hearts as ours, weakness is wickedness in the long run. Whoever lets himself be shaped and guided by anything lower than an inflexible will, fixed in obedience to God, will in the end be shaped into a deformity and guided to wreck and ruin. Dreams however rapturous, contemplations however devout, emotions however deep and sacred, make no man pure and good without hard effort, and that to a large extent in the direction of resistance. Righteousness is not a mere negative idea, and Scripture morality is something much deeper than prohibitions. But there is no law for us without prohibitions, and no righteousness without casting out evil that is strong in us, and fighting against evil that is attractive around us. Therefore we need firmness to guard holiness, to be the hard shell in which the rich fruit matures. We need a wholesome obstinacy in the right that will neither be bribed nor coaxed nor bullied, nor anyhow persuaded out of the road in which we know that we should walk. ‘Add to your faith manly vigour.’ Learn that an indispensable requisite of holiness is prescribed in that command, ‘Whom resist, steadfast in the faith.’ And remember that the ground of all successful resistance and the need for it are alike taught in that series of petitions, which makes a holy spirit the foundation of a constant spirit, and a constant spirit the guard of a holy spirit.
Then consider, for a moment, the third element in the character which David longs to possess-a free spirit. He who is holy because full of God’s Spirit, and constant in his holiness, will likewise be ‘free.’ That is the same word which is in other places translated ‘willing’-and the scope of the Psalmist’s desire is, ‘Let my spirit be emancipated from sin by willing obedience.’ This goes very deep into the heart of all true godliness. The only obedience which God accepts is that which gladly, and almost as by an instinctive inward impulse, harmonises the human will with the divine. ‘Lo! I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do Thy will, and Thy law is within my heart.’ That is a blessed thought, that we may come to do Him service not because we must, but because we like; not as serfs, but as sons; not thinking of His law as a slave-driver that cracks his whip over our heads, but as a friend that lets us know how we may please Him whom it is our delight to obey. And so the Psalmist prays, ‘Let my obedience be so willing that I had rather do what Thou wilt than anything besides.’
‘Then,’ he thinks, ‘I shall be free.’ Of course-for the correlative of freedom is lawful authority, and the definition of freedom is willing submission. If for us duty is joy, and all our soul’s desires flow with an equable motion parallel to the will of God, then there is no sense of restraint in keeping within the limits beyond which we do not seek to go. The willing spirit sets us free, free from the ‘ancient solitary reign’ of the despot Self, free from the mob rule of passions and appetites, free from the incubus of evil habits, free from the authority of men’s voices and examples. Obedience is freedom to them that have learned to love the lips that command. We are set free that we may serve: ‘O Lord! truly I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds.’ We are set free in serving: ‘I will walk at liberty, for I keep Thy precepts.’ Let a willing, free spirit uphold me.
II. Observe, too, that desires for holiness should become prayers.
David does not merely long for certain spiritual excellences; he goes to God for them. And his reasons for doing so are plain. If you will look at the former verses of this psalm, you will see that he had found out two things about his sin, both of which make him sure that he can only be what he should be by God’s help. He had learned what his crimes were in relation to God, and he had further learned what they indicated about himself. The teaching of his bitter experience as to the former of these two matters lies in that saying which some people have thought strange. ‘Against Thee only have I sinned.’ What! Had he not committed a crime against human law? had he not harmed Uriah and Bathsheba? were not his deeds an offence to his whole kingdom? Yes, he knew all that; but he felt that over and above all that was black in his deed, considered in its bearing upon men, it was still blacker when it was referred to God; and a sadder word than ‘crime’ or ‘fault’ had to be used about it. I have done wrong as against my fellows, but worse than that, I have sinned against God. The notion of sin implies the notion of God. Sin is wilful transgression of the law of God. An atheist can have no conception of sin. But bring God into human affairs, and men’s faults immediately assume the darker tint, and become men’s sins. Therefore the need of prayer if these evils are to be blotted out. If I had done crime against man only, I should not need to ask God for pardon or cleansing; but I have sinned against Him, and done this evil in His sight, therefore my desires for deliverance address themselves to Him, and my longings for purity must needs break into the cry of entreaty to that God with whom are forgiveness and redemption from all iniquity.
And still further, looking at the one deed, he sees in it something more than an isolated act. It leads him down to its motive; that motive carries him to the state of mind in which it could have power; that state of mind, in which the motive could have power, carries him still deeper to the bias of his nature as he had received it from his parents. And thinking of how he had fallen, how upon his terraced palace roof there the eye had inflamed the heart, and the heart had yielded so quickly to the temptations of the eye, he finds no profounder explanation of the disastrous eclipse of goodness than this: ‘Behold! I was shapen in iniquity.’
Is that a confession or a palliation, do you think? Is he trying to shuffle off guilt from his own shoulders? By no means, for these words are the motive for the prayer, ‘Purge me, and I shall be clean.’ That is to say, he has learned that isolated acts of sin inhere in a common root, and that root a disposition inherited from generation to generation to which evil is familiar and easy, to which good, alas! is but too alien and unwelcome. None the less is the evil done his deed. None the less has he to wail in full consciousness of his individual responsibility: ‘Against Thee have I sinned.’ But the effect of this second discovery, that sin has become so intertwisted with his being that he cannot shake off the venomous beast into the fire and feel no harm, is the same as that of the former-to drive him to God, who alone can heal the nature and separate the poison from his blood.
Dear friends! there are some of you who are wasting your lives in paroxysms of fierce struggle with the evil that you have partially discovered in yourselves, alternating with long languor, fits of collapse and apathy, and who make no solid advance, just because you will not lay to heart these two convictions-your sin has to do with God, and your sins come from a sinful nature. Because of the one fact, you must go to God for pardon; because of the other, you must go to God for cleansing. There, in your heart, like some black well-head in a dismal bog, is the source of all the swampy corruption that fills your life. You cannot stanch it, you cannot drain it, you cannot sweeten it. Ask Him, who is above your nature and without it, to change it by His own new life infused into your spirit. He will heal the bitter waters. He alone can. Sin is against God; sin comes from an evil heart; therefore, if your longings for that ideal perfectness are ever to be fulfilled, you must make prayers of them, and cry to Him who hears, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God! take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.’
III. Finally, observe that prayers for perfect cleansing are permitted to the lips of the greatest sinners.
Such longings as these might seem audacious, when the atrocity of the crime is remembered, and by man’s standard they are so. Let the criminal be thankful for escape, and go hide himself, say men’s pardons. But here is a man, with the evil savour of his debauchery still tainting him, daring to ask for no mere impunity, but for God’s choicest gifts. Think of his crime, think of its aggravations from God’s mercies to him, from his official position, from his past devotion. Remember that this cruel voluptuary is the sweet singer of Israel, who had taught men songs of purer piety and subtler emotion than the ruder harps of older singers had ever flung from their wires. And this man, so placed, so gifted, set up on high to be the guiding light of the nation, has plunged into the filth of these sins, and quenched all his light there. When he comes back penitent, what will he dare to ask? Everything that God can give to bless and gladden a soul. He asks for God’s Spirit, for His presence, for the joy of His salvation; to be made once again, as he had been, the instrument that shall show forth His praise, and teach transgressors God’s ways. Ought he to have had more humble desires? Does this great boldness show that he is leaping very lightly over his sin? Is he presumptuous in such prayers? God be thanked-no! But, knowing all his guilt, and broken and contrite in heart {crushed and ground to powder, as the words mean}, utterly loathing himself, aware of all the darkness of his deserts, he yet cherishes unconquerable confidence in the pitying love of God, and believes that in spite of all his sin, he may yet be pure as the angels of heaven-ay, even holy as God is holy.
Thank God we have such an example for our heartening! Lay it to heart, brethren! You cannot believe too much in God’s mercy. You cannot expect too much at His hands. He is ‘able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.’ No sin is so great but that, coming straight from it, a repentant sinner may hope and believe that all God’s love will be lavished upon him, and the richest of God’s gifts be granted to his desires. Even if our transgression is aggravated by a previous life of godliness, and have given the enemies great occasion to blaspheme, as David’s did, yet David’s penitence may in our souls lead on to David’s hope, and the answer will not fail us. Let no sin, however dark, however repeated, drive us to despair of ourselves, because it hides from us our loving Saviour. Though beaten back again and again by the surge of our passions and sins, like some poor shipwrecked sailor sucked back with every retreating wave and tossed about in the angry surf, yet keep your face towards the beach, where there is safety, and you will struggle through it all, and though it were but on some floating boards and broken pieces of the ship, will come safe to land. He will uphold you with His Spirit, and take away the weight of sin that would sink you, by His forgiving mercy, and bring you out of all the weltering waste of waters to the solid shore.
So whatever thy evil behaviour, come with it all, and cast thyself before Him, with whom is plenteous redemption. Embrace in one act the two truths, of thine own sin and of God’s infinite mercy in Jesus Christ. Let not the one blind you to the other; let not the one lead you to a morbid despondency, which is blind to Christ, nor the other to a superficial estimate of the deadliness of sin, which is blind to thine own self. Let the Cross teach thee what sin is, and let the dark background of thy sin bring into clear prominence the Cross that bringeth salvation. Know that thou art utterly black and sinful. Believe that God is eternally, utterly, inconceivably, merciful. Learn both, in Him who is the Standard by which we can estimate our sin, and the Proof and Medium of God’s mercy. Trust thyself and all thy foulness to Jesus Christ; and, so doing, look up from whatsoever horrible pit and miry clay thou mayest have fallen into, with this prayer, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God! and renew a right spirit within me, take not Thy Holy Spirit from me, and uphold me with Thy free Spirit.’ Then the answer shall come to you from Him who ever puts the best robe upon His returning prodigals, and gives His highest gifts to sinners who repent. ‘From all your filthiness will I cleanse you, a new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain New Obedience as a Fruit of Faith
New Obedience as a Fruit of Faith
v. 10. Create in me a clean heart, O God, the believer’s heart having been created anew in conversion, and renew a right spirit within me, establishing his heart and soul so that he was sure of his salvation, and that his mind would be centered upon God’s Word, upon the performance of His will.
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v. 11. Cast me not away from Thy presence, for he had once felt the excruciating agony of being excluded from the mercy of God and feared a repetition of the experience, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me, so that he would slip back into the impenitent condition of that one terrible year, persist in his opposition to God’s gracious influence, and thus be lost. Every believer prays to the Lord to be preserved against the hardening of his heart which leads to rejection of the Gospel-message and to final destruction.
v. 12. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, for that is the height of the believer’s happiness, if the Lord turns to him in grace, and uphold me with Thy free spirit, rather, the spirit of willingness will uphold me, namely, in the renewal of his whole life, in working true sanctification in him.
v. 13. Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways, making known to them what God had done for him in delivering him from the misery of his sinful condition; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee, by reason of this open confession and instruction by the mouth of David, to which his gratitude for the mercy experienced would prompt him.
v. 14. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, not only that which was resting upon him on account of his murder of Uriah, but that of all severe transgressions, which are like enemies that try to oppress and enslave, O God, Thou God of my salvation, the mighty Lord of heaven being the only one who could help and deliver in such straits; and my tongue shall sing aloud of Thy righteousness, namely, that imputed to him by the grace of God in the Redeemer.
v. 15. O Lord, open Thou my lips, God Himself giving him the necessary skill and ability to express his thanks in the proper manner, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise, in an open and joyful song of praise for the grace vouchsafed him.
v. 16. For Thou desirest not sacrifice, namely, as a mere external, mechanical act of worship, else would I give it; Thou delightest not in burnt offering, such as is brought in a mere outward compliance with the letter of the Law, much as God is otherwise pleased to have the true faith of the heart shown in outward acts of worship.
v. 17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, one that is crushed by the consciousness of one’s sinfulness; a broken and a contrite heart, one from which all self-righteousness has been removed by the realization of guilt, as shown in the demands of the Law, O God, Thou wilt not despise, in such a one, rather, He takes pleasure, with that He is delighted. Such sacrifices of the heart are then revealed in the corresponding sacrifices of the lips, in praises to God for the wonderful mercy vouchsafed in the forgiveness of sins. In conclusion, David includes himself with the entire congregation of believers.
v. 18. Do good in Thy good pleasure unto Zion, showing His favor to the congregation of believers named after the Temple-mount; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem, namely, the spiritual walls of His Church, of the true people of God, the underlying thought being that the Lord would not permit the offense of David’s transgression to take faith from the heart of any weak believer.
v. 19. Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering, David being ready, in the consciousness of the righteousness imputed to him and in the eagerness to make known his change of heart, to bring sacrifices of every kind to expiate for his sins; then shall they offer bullocks upon Thine altar, as an act of thanksgiving for the mercy which he had received. A truly penitent person will offer to the Lord the sacrifices of his heart, of his lips, and of his hands, and the Lord will take pleasure in such offerings, if only the offense of heinous transgressions has first been removed.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Create in me a clean heart
Create in me a clean heart
Here the "heart" represents the feelings and desires. Being completely devoted and obedient to God is spoken of as having a clean heart. AT: "Make me completely devoted to you" or "Make me want to obey you always" (See: Metonymy and Metaphor)
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renew a right spirit within me
Here "spirit" represents the attitude and desires of a David. AT: "make my attitude right" or "make me always want to do what is right" (See: Metonymy)
Do not drive me away from your presence
"Do not force me to go away from you." Being rejected by God is spoken of as being forced to go away from him. AT: "Do not reject me as one of your people" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
create
clean
heart
spirit
Holy Spirit
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 51:10-12 God’s Spirit renews and recreates the human spirit.
51:10-12 God’s Spirit renews and recreates the human spirit.
51:10 A loyal spirit yields the inner qualities of constancy and perseverance.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.