You are My God – I Cannot Be My Own Master: Augustine on Psalm 143

[In the February 21 sermon on Psalms 142 and 143, I quoted from Augustine’s commentary on 143:10. As mentioned in a December blog post, we do well to interact with believers who are not our contemporaries, for they will often see in Scripture what we miss. I commend to you, therefore, these excerpts from Augustine’s comments on Psalm 143:5-11, based on this 19th century English translation. I have made some edits, updating the verb forms, generally replacing the cited Scriptures with the ESV, adding Scripture references, and clarifying some sentences. So I pray that you may profit from this 1600-year-old exposition! – Coty]

[Verse 5] In all the works of God then, and in meditation on all the works of God, [David] introduces grace, he commends grace, he boasts that he has found grace, the grace whereby we are saved without price…. Why do you boast of your own righteousness? Why lift yourself up, being ignorant of the righteousness of God? Because you contributed to your salvation? What did you contribute to being made a man? Look back then upon the Framer of your life, the Author of your substance, of your righteousness, and of your salvation: meditate upon the works of His hands, for even the righteousness in you, you will find, is the work of His hands [Ephesians 2:9-10]…. Turn from your own work, to His work Who made you; He fashioned you, and let Him refashion what He fashioned and you destroyed. For you exist because He made you; you are good – if you are – because He made you good.…

[Verse 6] And what did I do when I saw that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning [James 1:17]? When I saw this, I turned from the evil work which I had wrought in myself, and I stretched forth my hands unto You…. Indeed, my soul is as a land without water to You. Rain upon me to bring forth from me good fruit…. I can thirst for You; I cannot water myself. My soul thirsts for the living God. When shall I come to Him [Psalm 42:2], save when He has come to me?

[Verse 7a] “Answer me quickly, O Lord!” For what need of delay to inflame my thirst, when already I thirst so eagerly? You delayed the rain, that I might drink Your flow. If then You delayed for this cause, now give, for my soul is as a land without water to You…. Let Your Spirit fill me, for my spirit has failed me. This is the reason why You should quickly hear me…. I am now poor in spirit; make me blessed in the kingdom of heaven [Matthew 5:3]…. But quickly hear me, O God, rain on me, strengthen me, that I be not dust which the wind drives away from the face of the earth [Psalm 1:4]. Quickly hear me, O God; my spirit has failed: let not my need suffer longer delay…. “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” [2 Corinthians 5:17]. Old things pass away in our own spirit, they are made new in Your Spirit.

[Verse 7b] “Hide not Your face from me.” You hid it from me when I was proud. For once I was full, and in my fulness I was puffed up. Once in my fulness I said, … “I shall not be moved.” I knew not Your Righteousness, and tried to establish my own; … but from You came whatever fulness I had. And to prove to me that it was from You, You hid Your Face from me, and I was troubled. After this trouble, … then I became like a land without water to You: hide not Your Face! … Hide not Your Face from me, because, if You hide it, I shall “be like them that go down into the pit.” What does “go down into the pit” mean? … He no longer believes in Providence, or if he does believe, he thinks that he has no longer anything to do with it. He sets before himself license to sin, the reins of iniquity being let loose now that he has no hope of pardon. He does not confess his sin…. “Hide not Your face from me or I shall be like them that go down into the pit.”

[Verse 8a] “Let me hear in the morning of Your steadfast love, for in you I trust.” Behold, I am in the night, yet I have trusted in You, until the iniquity of the night passes away. For we have, as Peter says, “the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” [2 Peter 1:19]. He calls “morning” the time after the end of the world…. “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience [Romans 8:25] The night requires patience, the day will give joy.

[Verse 8b] But what do we do until the morning comes? For it is not enough to hope for the morning; we must … seek Him…. Since then we must thus hope for the morning, and bear this night, and persevere in this patience until the day dawn, what meanwhile must we do here? So that you will not think you should do anything of yourself to earn your being brought to the morning, he says, “Make me know the way I should go.” That is why God lit the lamp of prophecy, that is why He sent Jesus in the vessel, as it were, of the flesh…. Walk by prophecy, … walk by the word of God. As yet you do not see the Word as He was in the beginning, God with God [John 1:1]: walk by the Form of [the Word as] a servant, and you shall be conformed to the Form of God. “For to You I lift unto up my soul.” I have lifted it up to You, not against You. With You is the Fountain of life: to You have I lifted up my soul. I have brought my soul as a vessel to the Fountain: fill me, therefore, for unto You have I lifted up my soul.

[Verse 9] “Deliver me from my enemies, O Lord, for I have fled for refuge to You.” I who once fled from You, now flee to You…. I think not here of human enemies. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. But against whom?… The rulers of this world, of this darkness, the rulers of the wicked [Ephesians 6:12]; against these you wrestle. Great is your conflict, not to see your enemies, and yet to conquer. Against the rulers of this world, of this darkness, the devil, that is, and his angels….

[Verse 10a] “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God.” Glorious confession! glorious rule! “For You are my God.” To another I would hasten to be re-made, if by another I was made. You are my all, for You are my God. Shall I seek a father to get an inheritance? You are my God, not only the Giver of my inheritance, but my Inheritance itself [Psalm 142:5]…. Shall I seek a patron, to obtain redemption? You are my God. Lastly, having been created, do I desire to be re-created? You are my God, my Creator, Who created me by Your Word, and re-created me by Your Word. But You created me by Your Word [the Son], Who was with You: You re-created me by Your Word, made Flesh for our sakes. Teach me then to do Your will, for You are my God. If You do not teach, I shall do my own will, and my God will abandon me. Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God. Teach me: for it cannot be that You are my God, and yet I am to be my own master. See how grace is commended to us. This hold fast, this drink in, this let none drive out of your hearts, lest you have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge [Romans 10:2]; lest, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and going about to establish your own righteousness, you submit not yourselves to the righteousness of God [Romans 10:3]….

[Verse 10b-11] Your good Spirit, not my bad one, … shall lead me into the right land. For my bad spirit has led me into a crooked land. And what have I deserved? What can be reckoned as my good works without Your aid, through which I might … be worthy to be led by Your Spirit into the right land? What are my works? … Listen, then, with all your power, to the commendation of Grace, whereby you are saved without price. “For Your Name’s sake, O Lord, You shall make me live.” You shall make me live. “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory” [Psalm 115:1]. “For Your Name’s sake, O Lord, You shall make me live in Your righteousness;” not in my own righteousness. Not because I have deserved to live, but because You have mercy. For I deserve nothing of you except punishment. You have pruned from me my own merits; You have grafted in Your own gifts.

Who is Godly?

What is the basis on which you approach God?

How did David approach Him?

Consider Psalm 86:2: “Preserve my life, for I am godly.” It almost sounds as if David is saying, “Look at how good I’ve been! I’ve become like You, Lord! I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain, now You fulfill Yours – keep me alive! Save me from my enemies!”

But that seems to fly in the face of what Scripture says elsewhere. For example, many of us have memorized Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

These and the surrounding verses clearly show that we are saved by God’s grace, not by our works. We are saved through faith in the crucified and risen Christ, not by our efforts. No matter how many good works we may do, no matter how faithful we may be, our status before God depends upon “the great love with which [God] loved us” (v. 5), not upon the “good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (v. 10). Those works, indeed, are the result of God’s love, not the prerequisite for God’s love.

How then do we understand a verse like Psalm 86:2?

To understand this verse rightly, we must understand the word translated “godly.” What does this Hebrew word, hasidim, mean? It is often translated “saints.” But the word shares a root with the important Hebrew word hesed – translated “lovingkindness,” “steadfast love,” “covenant love,” or “unfailing love.. The English translations don’t look very similar. But any Hebrew reader would note the close relation between hasidim and hesed.

The word hesed, appearing more than 250 times in the Old Testament, is commonly used of God’s love for His people. For example, when God proclaims His Name before Moses at Mt Sinai, He says, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in hesed and faithfulness, keeping hesed for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6b-7a). David concludes Psalm 23 by saying, “Surely goodness and hesed will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

The word hasidim, on the other hand, is much less frequent, appearing in its plural and singular forms only 32 times. The link with hesed helps us to see that the hasidim are the people to whom God has shown hesed (see Psalm 18:25 and 2 Samuel 22:26). As one scholar writes, this word “indicates those who were recipients of God’s grace and who as a result show the impact of grace in their lives.” That is, “we love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Thus, the word can be used to refer to God’s people (Psalms 85:8) or God’s servants (Psalm 79:2), since anyone who receives God’s hesed belongs to Him. But the word can also be used to refer to “the faithful ones” (Psalm 12:1), since those loved by God are changed by Him. They become faithful to Him. Those God loves, He transforms into His likeness.

So hasidim does not mean “godly” in the sense of someone who has become like God through his own efforts. Instead, hasidim refers to those to whom God has shown hesed, and thus are made to be godly, made to be saints, by His grace.

This understanding of hasidim gives much opportunity for fruitful reflection on several of the verses in which the word appears. Consider:

  • Psalm 31:23 “Love the LORD, all you his hasidim!” That is, “Love the LORD, all you loved by Him!” In effect, this is 1 John 4:19 in the Old Testament.
  • Psalm 37:28 “For the LORD loves justice; he will not forsake his hasidim. They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off.” That is, “The LORD will never forsake those He loves, but will preserve them forever. Those outside His love will be cut off.”
  • Psalm 32:5-6 “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore let the hasidim offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.”

The translation “godly” is particularly problematical in this last quotation. David says the hasidim are to offer prayers of confession when they sin. Given our usual understanding of “godly”, this makes little sense. Furthermore, near the end of the psalm he writes, “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but hesed surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.” David draws a contrast not between those who are sinners and those who are godly; rather the contrast is between sinners who confess, and the wicked who do not. Thus, “the wicked” are those who have never been transformed by God’s hesed, and so are not His people. Those who sin and confess are the hasidim, God’s people, those whom He loves. This is the real meaning of “godly” in this verse.

Finally, let’s return to Psalm 86:2: “Preserve my life, for I am one of the hasidim”. David says, “Preserve my life, Lord, not because of my righteous acts, not because of what I have done or accomplished, not because of my sacrifices or religious acts. But preserve my life because You love me! Preserve my life because You have made me Yours, You have made me one of Your people! Preserve my life because You are transforming me into Your likeness!”

This is a precious truth, which will help us fight the fight of faith day by day. God’s people, the hasidim, are those to whom He shows hesed. Thus, the main question for us is not, “How am I performing?” The question is, “Am I one of God’s people, God’s child, loved by Him and transformed by His love into His likeness?” The Lord God will indeed preserve His people. He will keep them in His love. He will complete the good work He has begun in them. Nothing can separate God’s people from the love He has for them in Christ Jesus. Amen.

 

Love, Suffering, Obedience – and Resurrection

What is love?

There are a thousand answers to that question, since we use the word “love” in so many different ways. So let’s narrow the question down:

What is God’s love? And what does it look like when we love with God’s love?

In a recent book – A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships – Paul Miller argues that this type of love is a one-way covenant; we step out in love without needing or even expecting a response. This makes us vulnerable, and often leads to suffering. We rightly cry out in lament over such suffering. But faith holds on to God’s covenant love in the midst of suffering, so that we continue to walk in obedience – we continue to love. In this we are following the path of Jesus’ life – love, suffering, death. But Jesus rose from the dead. And as God raised Jesus, He similarly will bring about a form of resurrection in us.

Miller masterfully brings out these truths from the book of Ruth, following Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz through their journeys of love, suffering, lament, obedience, and resurrection. Consider these selections – and may we follow the path of love.

Love and Covenant

[We learn through the storyline of Scripture that God’s love is a one-sided covenant, His determination to do good to His people, to redeem them, to make them His, despite their rebellion and disobedience. Thus, God’s love is also covenantal. Our love, if it is to be like God’s, must also be covenantal. The Hebrew word most often used of God’s love for His people is hesed. Paul Miller sometimes uses this word as an adjective to clarify that he is referring to that type of love.]

[There is a] modern myth that says, “Love is a feeling. If the feeling is gone, then love is gone.” Hollywood has no resources to endure in love when the feeling is gone. Actually, that’s the point when we are ready to learn how to love. 285

Ruth walks into the city ignored and, in effect, alone. One of the hardest parts of a hesed love is that you can love others, but there may be no one to love you. The very act of loving can make you lonely. . . .

But that loneliness, that dying, instead of being the end of you, can display Jesus’s beauty in you. The moment when you think everything has gone wrong is exactly the moment when the beauty of God is shining through you. True glory is almost always hidden—when you are enduring quietly with no cheering crowd. 809

The question is not “How do I feel about this relationship?” but “Have I been faithful to my word, to the covenants I am in?” As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matt. 5:46). In other words, if I love only when I feel like it, then I’ve really not understood love. 923

[After Ruth goes to Boaz’s field:] If you are bent on pursuing personal freedom, you remain frozen hunting for the perfect field, the perfect person. You never land. You have to commit to make love work. We don’t love in general. We love someone, somewhere. Setting our affections on someone always means narrowing down. Election and love are inseparable. This goes against the spirit of our age, which prizes independence and perfection. . . . Often our difficulties with love are simply that we react to the constriction that accompanies love. But that constriction is inherent in love. To love is to limit. . . .

Ironically, the experience of love, of narrowing your life, broadens and deepens your life. The narrower your life, the broader your soul. . . . Love always involves a narrowing of the life, a selecting of imperfection. 1072

Life is a path or pilgrimage. It is lived not in isolated moments, but in trajectories of reaping and sowing. Everything we do now creates the person we are becoming. We do not live in an impersonal, rigid world in which obedience mechanically dispenses reward; we live in our Father’s world, a richly textured world organized around invisible bonds that knit us together. All of life is covenant. 1319

[Consider covenant as a kind of limitation:] Repentance often drives the journey of love. It moves the story forward. Because Naomi returned home, God’s grace will be unleashed in her life. Repentance involves a returning to the box, to the world of limits, that my Father has given me. I stop creating my own story and submit to the story that God is weaving. . . .

Life is like a beautiful garden with a tree whose fruit I can’t touch. That “no” defines and shapes my life in the garden. So my relationship with my wife is like a wonderful garden with a solitary “no”: I cannot touch or develop emotional intimacy with another woman. That “no” narrows and limits my life. It provides a frame for my love to Jill. I am keenly aware that I can destroy a forty-year marriage in five minutes. That limiting, instead of boxing us in, lets the story come alive. 852

Love and Suffering

Suffering is the crucible for love. We don’t learn how to love anywhere else. Don’t misunderstand; suffering doesn’t create love, but it is a hothouse where love can emerge. Why is that? The great barrier to love is ego, the life of the self. In long-term suffering, if you don’t give in to self-pity, slowly, almost imperceptibly, self dies. This death of self offers ideal growing conditions for love. 221

Self-pity, [that is,] compassion turned inward, drives this downward spiral. Instead of reflecting on the wounds of Christ, I nurse my own wounds. Self-as-victim is the great narrative of our age. . . . Enshrining the victim is so seductive because you have been hurt. But self-pity is just another form of self-righteousness, and like all self-righteousness it isolates and elevates. It elevates you because it says you are better than the other person; you are the victim. It isolates you because you live in and are nourished by your interior world, which can’t be criticized. 1677

Suffering and Lament

[We often do our best to hide our suffering. Indeed, sometimes we confuse laments over suffering with lack of faith. But Paul Miller argues that Scripture is full of laments, and that lamentation is a necessary step on the path to hesed love.]

A lament puts us in an openly dependent position, where our brokenness reflects the brokenness of the world. It’s pure authenticity. Holding it in, not giving voice to the lament, can be a way of putting a good face on it. But to not lament puts God at arm’s length and has the potential of splitting us. We appear okay, but we are really brokenhearted. (emphasis added) 693

Listening to a lament is a powerful way of loving someone who is suffering. By being present, by not correcting or even offering our own unique brand of Christian encouragement (“It’s going to be all right – God’s in control”), we give those who are grieving space to be themselves.

This doesn’t mean that Naomi’s judgment of God is correct. God is good and just. He will answer her frustration with more goodness. Naomi was interpreting God through the lens of her experience.

She stopped in the middle of the story and measured God. A deeper faith waits until the end of the story and interprets experience through the lens of God’s faithfulness. Is this something we tell Naomi? No. It is what we tell ourselves. Good theology lets us endure quietly with someone else’s pain when all the pieces aren’t together. It acts like invisible faith-glue. 706

The opposite danger of not lamenting is over-lamenting. Dwelling on a lament is the breeding ground for bitterness. Bitterness is a wound nursed. Our culture’s emphasis on the sacredness of feelings often gives people an unspoken theology of bitterness. They feel entitled to it.727

Faith, Love and Obedience

[Difficult situations compel us to conclude:] You simply do not have the power or wisdom or ability in yourself to love. You know without a shadow of a doubt that you can’t love. That is the beginning of faith—knowing you can’t love. Faith is the power for love. 617

Unlike the Israelites who wanted to return to Egypt, Naomi is obeying, doing the right thing by returning to the Promised Land. Her feelings were all over the place, but she put one foot in front of the other as she returned. We can summarize her response this way:

Bitterness openly expressed to God + obedience  => a raw, pure form of faith

Bitterness openly expressed + disobedience => rebellion

Through a sheer act of will, Naomi continues to show up for life. In C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, the senior devil, Screwtape, warns his junior devil of the danger of this obedience.

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause [the Devil’s cause] is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy’s will [God’s will], looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. 747

Ruth’s act of loving put her at the bottom of society, but she doesn’t push back on her lowered status. She accepts the cost of love. Like Jesus, she takes the lower place. Love and humility are inseparable.

When serving is combined with humility, the serving becomes almost pleasurable. You are thankful for any gift given you. In contrast, pride can’t bear the weight of unequal love. . . . ride makes others’ joy, or even the possibility of our own joy, feel phony. It is an odd sort of authenticity where we demand that others be as depressed as we are. 1393

Jealousy is extraordinarily deceptive. It is by far the most destructive sin in communities and organizations that I’ve been a part of, and yet, I seldom hear it mentioned or confessed. It always masks itself as something else, creating a hidden chain of slander that drags someone down. A multiheaded hydra, it begins with an inability to rejoice with another’s success, leaks out as gossip, and finally erupts as slander. Jealousy seeks to gain by destroying others, while hesed  [love] loses by giving itself. One is the heart of evil. The other is pure gospel.  1494

Many Christians get stuck trying to grow their faith by growing their faith. They try to get closer to Jesus by getting closer to Jesus. Practically, that means they combine spiritual disciplines (the Word and prayer) with reflection on the love of God for them. But that will only get you so far. In fact it often leads to spiritual moodiness where you are constantly taking your pulse wondering how much you know the love of God for you. Or you go on an endless idol hunt trying to uncover ever deeper layers of sin. Oddly enough, this can lead to a concentration on the self, a kind of spiritual narcissism. Ruth discovers God and his blessing as she obeys, as she submits to the life circumstances that God has given her. So instead of running from the really hard thing in your life, embrace it as a gift from God to draw you into his life. 2095

Obedience and Resurrection

[Miller discusses how the life of loving obedience often follows the shape of a J-curve: Our love and obedience leads to suffering, and so our life seems to get worse. But God brings about the upward slope of the “J” – in ways that we cannot know ahead of time, following trajectories that we never expected.]

[God teaches] us to love by overloading our systems so we are forced to cry for grace. God permits our lives to become overwhelming, putting us on the downward slope of the J-curve so we come to the end of ourselves. I encouraged my friend to embrace the downward path, not to push against it or worry about where his feelings were with his wife. Jesus said, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . . No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:11, 18). Seeing the gospel as a journey remaps our stories by embedding them in the larger story of Jesus’s death and resurrection. His normal becomes our normal. 1004

Here’s what I have learned going through the J-curve:
1. We don’t know how or when resurrection will come. It is God’s work, not ours.
2. We don’t even know what a resurrection will look like. We can’t demand the shape or timing of a resurrection.
3. Like Jesus, we must embrace the death that the Father has put in front of us. The path to resurrection is through dying, not fighting.
4. If we endure, resurrection always comes. God is alive! 1021

We can do death. But we can’t do resurrection. We can’t demand resurrection—we wait for it. 1032

 May we love, suffer, lament, believe, obey – and see resurrection!

[Paul Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships (Crossway, 2014). Numbers after the quotations are Kindle locations.]