Quicken me after thy lovingkindness;
So shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth (Psalm 119:88).
The assurance of salvation that God’s people enjoy amidst the persecutions we suffer is not founded upon our love and commitment to God, but rather upon his to us. The only true and living God, the God of the Bible, reveals himself to be full of love and faithfulness toward his chosen ones. Christian believers can know for sure that we cannot perish, and that we shall finally be delivered from all our sins and miseries into joyous freedom and inexpressible bliss because of the Lord’s wonderful character and redeeming work for us and in us.
Simply stated, this is the gospel of salvation by faith alone in Christ alone through grace alone. Not only initial forgiveness and justification come this way. We must continue to depend on God’s grace in Christ through faith for our spiritual safekeeping and for the strength to progress toward greater consistency and excellence in practical sanctification. We do not hope in ourselves but in God’s faithful love for every blessing.
This two-line psalm verse consists of a petition and an expected consequence when God answers. It reveals that the psalmist is concerned “to be found in the way of his duty. His constant desire and design are to keep the testimony of God’s mouth, to keep to it as his rule and to keep hold of it as his confidence and portion forever and ever” (Matthew Henry, in loc.). Conscious of his weakness and liability to sin, David gives himself to believing prayer and expresses his anticipation that God will grant the petitions desired of him.
I NEED LIFE IN KEEPING WITH GOD’S FAITHFUL LOVE
“Quicken me after thy lovingkindness.” Quicken means to make alive, and this is close to the sense of the original, “restore to life.”1 Its form is imperative, not because it is a command but an urgent plea, “Give me life!” (ESV, without exclamation). It may include the thought of rescue from physical death, but the main idea is surely spiritual. It is, in effect, a heart-cry for personal revival. “Revive me” (NKJV).
Although we have a human and moral responsibility to love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves, the spiritual resources to do these things are grace gifts from God to people who have no inherent ability whatsoever to convert themselves, to prepare themselves for conversion, or even to live the Christian life after conversion. “The Christian life is not hard; it is impossible” (my former mentor, Pr. David Cornell), that is, impossible for carnal people. Regeneration and revival are both the effects of the Spirit in the sovereign exercise of his mercy, comparable to the wind (John 3.8). If we deny this, then we are not only at odds with Jesus’ plain teaching, but we are guilty of seizing credit for our own revival.
Startlingly, that false teacher of 19th century American revivalism, Charles Finney, effectively denied God’s sovereignty in revival. He even ridiculed the consensus judgment of the church at large on this matter:
It was common for the classes of persons just named to ask me, if I thought sinners could be Christians whenever they pleased, and whether I thought that any class of persons could repent, believe, and obey God without the strivings and new-creating power of the Holy Spirit (note well! –DSM). The church was almost universally settled down in the belief of a physical moral depravity, and, of course, in a belief in the necessity of a physical regeneration (?!, no, DSM), and also of course in the belief, that sinners must wait to be regenerated by divine power while they were passive. Professors also must wait to be revived, until God, in mysterious sovereignty, came and revived them. As to revivals of religion, they were settled down in the belief to a great extent, that man had no more agency in producing them than in producing showers of rain.2
This is a gross caricature of Jonathan Edwards and others being criticized, but it exposes Mr. Finney’s belief that revival can be had as readily as one might turn a spigot on the kitchen sink for a steady flow of water. I quote him because whether many realize it or not, much of contemporary evangelicalism is infested with this man-centered spirit and “instant revival” theology.
Friends, God is not our personal bellhop to snap into instant conformity with our commands whenever we feel like issuing them! He reveals himself otherwise, even as our heavenly Father who loves to be petitioned by his children for the Holy Spirit and promises that our pleas will not ultimately be ignored (Luke 11.13). But God answers this and every other noble prayer, both with regard to timing and degree, in keeping with his great wisdom and love, and to demonstrate his sovereign prerogative to give or withhold, so that when he answers, it is obvious that he deserves all the praise for the blessing. Of course we ought to pray for revival, but we should never imagine that we can force God’s hand in this or anything else. When we find ourselves yearning for revival, that is evidence that God is already at work in us, prompting us to seek the blessing he always intended to give us.
The AV translates part of the first line, “after thy lovingkindness,” and the preposition ought to be understood in the sense of “in accordance with.”3 The psalmist is saying to God, “I need the kind of great spiritual revival that is in accordance with your lovingkindness,” this latter word being one of the most wonderful in the entire OT. The best way to express the Hebrew original is by a compound like the AV uses. Other attempts include “faithful mercy, constant goodness,”4 and “unfailing love. . . .
[which] refer[s] to God’s constancy and fidelity in love, promised to his covenant people at Sinai. . . . The love of Yahweh is his commitment to those who love him to be unceasingly generous in his forgiveness, compassion, and blessings. His fidelity may also be expressed by the word [translated] faithfulness. There is no limit to his faithfulness. . . . The quality of God’s love guarantees the continual operation of all his benefits (perfections) toward his people, including righteousness, uprightness, justice, forgiveness, patience, and compassion.5
In other words, God has irrevocably covenanted with believers to lavish the benefits of his grace upon us, though we never, ever come to deserve them. Therefore, believers have a warrant to pray for the continuance and increase of the influences of God’s life-giving Spirit upon our souls because this blessing is absolutely guaranteed to us in the gospel promise itself! For example, Jesus urged his thirsty hearers to come to him and drink, for whoever would believe on Christ, “out of his [Christ’s, ?] belly shall flow rivers of living water,” and in saying this Jesus was speaking figuratively of the Holy Spirit (John 7.37-39).6 Spiritual revival belongs by right to all who are trusting in Jesus Christ. An important means by which we come to experience it more fully is by believing prayer to God for it. We ought to join with the psalmist’s divinely-prompted example and pray, “Lord, revive me in keeping with your faithful love!”
I WILL OBEY GOD AS A RESULT OF HIS FAITHFUL LOVE
The answer to this prayer will be seen by the saint’s perseverance and progress in obedience to God’s revealed will. “So shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth.” The first word of this second line in this context seems to have the sense of “so that; . . . a marker of a result.”7 “Lord, if you will revive me according with your faithful love, then as a result I will keep your Word.” The psalmist has a complete reliance, not on himself or even on prayer itself, but on the sovereign Lord to whom he prayed. We must realize that our sanctification as believers rests upon God’s keeping his rock-solid promises, and therefore, it cannot possibly fail to be accomplished.
God’s commandments are called “the testimony of [his] mouth” by an anthropomorphism.8 The written Scriptures are so closely associated with God as their Author that even though he used human instruments to write them, they are the same as if they were breathed out of his own mouth, if he had a mouth (cf. 2 Tim 3.16, “inspired” = “God-breathed”). Therefore keeping his commandments is part and parcel of deep personal communion with him. “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2.3; cf. vv. 4-5). Obedience to God is also an evidence of his electing love toward his people. “The surest token of God’s good-will toward us is his good work in us” (Matthew Henry, in loc.).
These important biblical concepts are woven throughout the entire message of Scripture and have been nicknamed, “experimental9 Calvinism.” Augustine grasped them profoundly and wrote,
My whole hope is in your exceeding great mercy and that alone. Give what you command and command what you will.10 You command [self-control] from us, and when I knew, as it is said, that no one could be [self-controlled] unless God gave it to him, even this was a point of wisdom to know whose gift it was.11
This perspective will prompt us to seek every virtue from God through prayer, and to know that we will finally have them all in perfect fullness through Christ.
Notes:
1. DBLSD #2649 piel stem.
2. Finney, Systematic Theology, p. 350 (1878).
3. MWCD, 11th edition; for the Heb. see DBLSD #3869.4, “a marker involving a similarity or correspondence.”
4. Gesenius’ Lexicon (1897 edition), p. 332.
5. EBC, Appendix to Psa 25 by Willem VanGemeren.
6. See D. A. Carson’s elaborate discussion of this complex interpretive issue, in loc.
7. DBLSD #2256.6.
8. A figure of speech that attributes human physical traits to God.
9. In the archaic sense of “experiential.”
10. “This sentence caught the attention of Pelagius [the heretic who perhaps most influenced Finney—DSM], a British monk living at Rome [who thought] the suggestion that God should be responsible for granting human beings the ability to perform his commands made nonsense of the idea of divine lawgiving. . . [but with] Saint Paul, . . . . [Augustine] held that human beings are powerless to obey God’s commands unless aided by God himself” (Confessions, Outler’s translation, footnote 6 on Book 10.
11. Ibid., 10.29.40.
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