Psalm 44

Psalm 44

B.

“…All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant.  Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way…”

It has always been a source of great consternation for me to consider the relationship between the nature of man to be responsible to God and the sovereignty of God being responsible for man.  Scripture speaks in terms of righteousness and wickedness, which specifically addresses the moral quality of our lives, and yet, it speaks its entire message in terms of God’s complete sovereignty and man’s complete depravity.  If man were able to choose good of his own accord, then his nature would not be completely corrupt, having the ability to identify good and to choose it.  We would have no need for a savior but only an instructor.  If, however, man is completely corrupt, as the Scriptures instruct, then he cannot do any good.  The good he is, therefore, capable of is not something that he can be responsible for.  I confess that when I struggle with my salvation, it is this that I struggle with:  How can man be held responsible for sin but not for righteousness?  In other words, when I sin, it is my responsibility, and yet, when I do well, it is God’s responsibility.  This seems to me, in my weakest moments, a disproportionate relationship.  For, if it is God’s providential hand to produce righteousness through me, is it not his hand that holds me as I sin?  The struggle for me is not with wanting to be held responsible for my righteousness.  I truly enjoy being a servant of higher authority and one I can call, “Majesty”.  I understand that I am an unworthy servant, and that doing good is only what is my duty.  What I want to know is, ‘Where is God’s sovereignty when I am sinning?’

            Take the story of Cain and Able, for instance.  Cain and Able both offer sacrifices of their own labors to the Lord.  Yet, while Able’s sacrifice is accepted, Cain’s is not.  Scripture offers no explanation for the difference in God’s response to either.  What it does describe, however, is Cain’s reaction to God’s rejection.  It says, ‘He was very angry and his face fell.’  His resentment, envy, and jealousy culminated in murder, and because of his reaction to these circumstances, we reason backward thinking that Cain’s heart was evil, and therefore, could not have offered an honoring sacrifice to God.  I do not buy this explanation for one reason: Apart from God’s acceptance first, how can any of us be anything but a murderer?  Scripture says (1 John 3:12) that Able’s deeds were righteous and his brother’s wicked, but would that not first have to do with God’s acceptance?  For, apart from God’s acceptance, who can stand?  Apart from God’s intervention with our sinful hearts, who can be righteous?  How could Able be accounted righteous without God’s first accepting him, and, in light of God’s rejection, how could Cain be anything but evil?  By definition of the terms Scripture gives us, this story seems as if it were a set of predetermined outcomes, and therefore, meaningless to us who will be held responsible for our lives.  In a world where God is primary and comes before all things, would that not make all things a reaction to what would initially be a course of events set into motion through God’s action—including our moral apptitude?  How can any action be considered righteous or wicked if it is always contingent upon God’s first accepting or rejecting us?

            This is a truth that we see expressed throughout all of Scripture:  Able was accepted and Cain rejected (Genesis 4); Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated (Malachi 1:2, 3); God shows mercy to Judah, but has no mercy upon Israel (Hosea 1:6, 7).  In each of these cases, of which there are more, sin is the universal constant and is present, expressing itself in wickedness, in either party.  Yet, God chooses to show favor to one and not the other, and because of God’s favor, their deeds become righteous apart from the wickedness that they share with the world.  I confess that there are times when this principle affects my soul in ways that I must repent. But, then, we have Psalm 44. 

For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.  But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us.  In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever.

           

            It occurs to me that when there is an example of God’s providential choosing of one over another, it is these same people that are listed in Hebrews 11, which is the chapter Christians affectionately refer to as the ‘Hall of Faith’.  By faith Able offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous.  Scripture defines faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  If we believe in a God who is the source of virtue, and yet, who is invisible to us, then we must also believe that righteousness is out of our reach by consequence of it being apart from us in a way that is invisible to us.  The only way, then, our actions can have value, or be righteous, is if they are offered to God with the knowledge that righteousness is not inherent in our performance but in God’s acceptance, and if He does not accept us, then, no matter what we do, we are cursed as Cain was cursed.  Perhaps, it was not what Able ‘did’ that made him righteous and acceptable before God, but what he ‘did not’ do.  Perhaps the difference between Cain and Able was that when the offerings were made, Cain believed that he was performing a righteous deed and Able did not.  Able hoped that God ‘would’ accept his sacrifice, and Cain believed that God ‘should’. The first acted with pride, the second with humility. When Cain found that his deed did not bring the reward he thought it deserved, his pride turned to bitterness, and bitterness committed murder. This is what I believe Paul means when he says, ‘Whatever is not done from faith is sin.’

God created this world in His infinite goodness, and for that reason, we can be aware of goodness, but because of the sin that inhabits our bodies, our actions can retain no form of goodness.  Therefore, righteousness in this world is attained not by anything we are capable of doing, but only in the humble admission of what we are incapable of doing and what we need God to fulfill in us.  When our actions, what we are in control of—what we can see—is abandoned as futile, it is at this point that faith begins and our lives become something substantial by being united with what is unseen and beyond our control.  On these terms, it is just as possible for someone to perform a ‘good’ action, and yet, remain unrighteous as it is for someone to perform a ‘wicked’ action and remain substantially righteous.  For those who call God their Lord make Him Lord over their whole lives, and so, when it seems like He has rejected us and disgraced us, when we have become the derision and scorn of those around us, we can know that, since the days of old, it was never the hand or arm of men that saved, but God’s right hand, His arm, and the light of His face; and we will not be put to shame.

            Sin is a foe that rises against us, and Satan is the enabler of evil.  With the same ferocity that he will attempt to convince us that we have no need for God, he will also seek to convince us that God has no desire for us.  But this is not true.  God loved us enough to give us His Son, therefore, as Paul reasons for us, ‘How will He not also freely give us all things?’  We must not allow our good deeds to convince us that we are righteous just as we must not allow our sin to convince us that we are rejected.  When shame has covered our faces at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger, we must not be false to God’s covenant, which is founded in Christ, and not us.  It is God who ordains salvation, and if He wishes to make us desperate and afflicted, whether it comes from within or without, so be it—His will be done.  For, how can it be an affliction to be desperate for a faithful God?  He knows the secrets of the heart, and if we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, then it is for His sake we are killed just as it for His sake that we will rise again.  For, though the world be chaos, in Christ, we will not be shaken.  If the world collapse upon us, we must remember, He has overcome the world.