Becoming His Righteousness (6) 2 Samuel 22:21-25; Psalm 18:20-24 21 The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness: according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me. 22 For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. 23 For all his judgments were before me: and as for his statutes, I did not depart from them. 24 I was also upright before him, and have kept myself from mine iniquity. 25 Therefore the Lord hath recompensed me according to my righteousness; according to my cleanness in his eye sight. This is one of King David’s psalms which, according to the introductory note, he had written “in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.” Both 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18 have virtually the same content because they are the same thing. David is extolling the wonders of God’s power to save and to deliver; he is so overawed at the thought of escaping from the hands of his enemies, coming out of the powerful claws of his merciless adversaries unhurt and recording fabulous victories over them all. To him it was a wonder of all wonders! But then, he also added that these mighty works of salvation and deliverances were wrought for him “according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands.” One would ask, “Why is it David’s righteousness and the cleanness of his hands? Didn’t the Bible say that it is not by our works of righteousness lest any man should boast? And is it not the same David who wrote that “there is no king saved by the multitude of an host (army): a mighty man is not delivered by much strength,” - Psalm 33:16? So how come it is now ‘according to my righteousness’?” Oh, the wonder of it! The saints must realize that there is unequivocally something like “His (God’s) righteousness” and “my righteousness;” “God’s uprightness” and “my uprightness;” “God’s cleanness of hand” and “my cleanness of hand,” etc. We are instructed in Philippians 2:5 “Let this mind be you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” God’s righteousness does not make any meaning if it is not manifested in you and in me. It is not complete until it is complete in His saints. This is now where we truly appreciate the beauty of righteousness by imputation and by impartation. In the above scripture David is not referring by any means to righteousness by imputation, which is a subject covered in Psalm 32:1-2. Here it is all about character, righteousness imparted through his enduring stay within the Father’s presence, under the shadows of the Lord’s wings. God took David from the shepherd’s field to Saul’s palace, and from Saul’s palace to the caves, wandering from one territory to another, in hunger, in strife, in adversities, in oppositions from within and without, forced sometimes to sojourn within the enemies’ territories. In all this, God not only preserved him but imparted and built up a righteous character within him. David grew up to be about the most, or one of the most, upright characters of his time. Let’s examine once again the constitutive elements of righteousness in our theme chapter and this is very important. Righteousness entails: 1. The cleanness of hand (which in the New Testament is repeatedly echoed as living a blameless or an unblemished life); 2. Keeping and observing the ways of the Lord; 3. Refusing to willfully depart or backslide from following God; 4. Keeping always in view the Lord’s judgments and statutes; 5. Walking in uprightness (i.e. in integrity) before God; 6. And keeping oneself from sin or iniquity. To this last point the apostle James adds by saying that “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted (unsmeared or undefiled) from the world (i.e. worldliness),” - James 1:27. May the Lord God Almighty grant that these wonderful virtues be found also in us, thru Christ His Son!
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 10:14:41 +0000
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