20. Viewing this psalm as prophetic of the Messiah, these
strongly-expressed claims to righteousness are readily understood, for his
garments were white as snow; but considered as the language of David they have
perplexed many. The dispensations of divine grace are to the fullest degree
sovereign and irrespective of human merit; yet in the dealings of Providence there
is often discernible a rule of justice by which the injured are at length
aveneged, and the righteous ultimately delivered. David’s early troubles arose
from the wicked malice of envious Saul, who no doubt prosecuted his
persecutions under cover of charges brought against the character of “the man after God’s own heart.” These
charges David declares to have been utterly false, and asserts that he
possessed a grace-given righteousness which the Lord had graciously rewarded in
defiance of all his calumniators. Before God, the man after God’s own heart was
a humble sinner, but before his slanderers he could with unblushing face speak
of the cleanness of [his] hands and the righteousness of his life. A
godly man has a clear conscience, and knows himself to be upright; is he to
deny his own consciousness, and to despise the work of the Holy Spirit, by
hypocritically making himself out to be worse than he is? Read the cluster of
expressions in this and the following verses as the song of a good conscience,
after having safely outridden a storm of obloquy, persecution, and abuse, and
there will be no fear of our upbraiding the writer as one who set too high a
price upon his own moral character.
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