January 16: Psalm 7

Today's reading is here.

For close to a year now, I have made it a habit to pray the Psalms. They are beautiful, God-focused, full of truth and comfort. But there are times that I come across verses in the Psalms that I just don't feel comfortable praying.

Verse 8 in today's passage is one such verse: "judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me." I will attempt to pray a psalm like this and then come to a verse like this and find myself saying, "no Lord, please DON'T judge me according to my righteousness!" Why is it in there, then? Is our understanding of our own inability to be righteous before God by our own works fundamentally flawed?

King David was the first one to pray this psalm. He wrote it. On the one hand, David was a man after God's own heart, a man who put his confidence in the Lord in such a way that he conquered Goliath and led armies in battle against God's enemies. He was a much more faithful man than I will ever be.

On the other hand, if David prayed this prayer with his own righteousness in view, then God did indeed answer his prayer. After David slept with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed to cover it up, God told him there would be consequences. The fact that "God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day" (7:11) became clear to David when his newborn son with Bathsheba died and later when another of his sons tried to overthrow his rule. David's violence descended upon his own skull (7:16).

But David's Son, Christ Jesus, could pray that prayer based on his own works. In his life, Christ was perfectly upright, perfectly obedient. He alone could unreservedly pray that God was his shield (7:10).

What makes me worship God today is that in the gospel, I am IN Christ, and so can pray WITH Christ, "O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge" (7:1). On my own, I have every expectation that God has whet his sword against me. In Christ, God's justice will never be directed against me. I am innocent of all charges because I am clothed in Christ's innocence. And that GLORIOUS fact makes me worship the Lord with David: "I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High" (7:17).