Depart from me, ye evildoers:
For I will keep the commandments of my God (Psa 119.115).
We all influence others and are influenced by them. God made us not only for solitude but for society. We need his grace to set a godly example and exercise a sanctifying influence upon those around us. We have a great vulnerability to being dragged down, morally and spiritually, to the level of the worst people with whom we keep company. Our fallen nature is no better than theirs. If even the most mature Christian suffers from remaining sin, so that except heaven sustains his integrity, backsliding proves inevitable, what then of us?
These soul-humbling admissions to ourselves will go far toward fostering a healthy self-doubt, an all-important reliance on the Lord, and a sensible caution about ungodly companions—all perspectives which help preserve us in this corrupt world.
Today’s Bible reader is apt to misinterpret grossly and then reject the sacred sentiment of the psalmist in our text. First, it offends the prevalent crass egalitarianism that emphasizes the sameness there is in all people. It is true that all are sinful, and no one is as bad as he can be. So to label any group as “evildoers” while excluding oneself is seen as blatantly self-righteous hypocrisy, but this hasty judgment is completely unwarranted and based on serious misconceptions.
Second, this verse strikes many as legalistic, since it aims for commandment-keeping, and a substantial segment of modern Christians have relegated obedience to God’s law to a previous dispensation, choosing to emphasize instead our freedom from the law by gospel grace. While believers are free from the law’s condemnation, God’s revealed will in Scripture remains a rule of life for us, and his grace sets us free to live in the fellowship of faith and obedience to him.
Let us elaborate on these two ideas in the exposition of this wonderful Psalm couplet.
RECOGNIZING A GREAT HINDRANCE
“Depart from me, ye evildoers.” This is not a “holier-than-thou” moment for the psalmist, but a frank recognition that he can and would be hindered in his sanctification of heart and life by companionship and too much familiarity with the morally corrupt people around him.
The badness of their example and danger of their influence is highlighted by the choice here of a descriptive term: “evildoers.” Even in English there is hardly any more unflattering label than this. In the original it has the sense of those who practice what is morally bad, even perverse, and hurtful to others.1 Scripture consistently holds such people in contempt and teaches that the wrath of God burns against them. They are like wild, ravenous dogs that travel in packs. They are the kind of people who surrounded Jesus Christ on the cross, jeering at him, adding insult to injury, filled with an insatiable, malicious thirst for his blood—the “wicked” (same Hebrew word in Psa 22.16). Psalm 26 bears witness to a holy attitude toward “evil doers” (same word):
I have not sat with vain persons,
Neither will I go in with dissemblers.
I have hated the congregation of evil doers;
And will not sit with the wicked (vv. 4-5).
James Montgomery Boice helpfully describes the dilemma a sensitive Christian feels when confronted by such Scripture texts. On the one hand, there is a true, clear, biblical basis for separation from the unconverted, but on the other, Scripture warns against a proud attitude that shuns spiritual outsiders in great need of a Savior. He explains the warrantable, biblical separation as
based, not on a sense of our being better than others but of not being good enough to survive in such company. Jesus had no trouble in his associations with sinners, because he was not one of them. We are and do. So, although we will be in the world and will associate with sinners daily for the gospel’s sake (we can hardly avoid it), we will not “consort with” or otherwise appear to condone those whose lives are openly opposed to God’s truth or morality.2
C. S. Lewis grappled with the same ethical problem we face and sensibly concluded,
A Christian would be wise to avoid, where he decently can, any meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious, cruel, dishonest, spiteful and so forth. Not because we are “too good” for them. In a sense because we are not good enough. We are not good enough to cope with all the temptations, nor clever enough to cope with all the problems, which an evening spent in such society produces.3
Dear brethren, we are probably far more in danger, because of the egalitarian spirit of the age, of consorting and conniving with people who despise our Lord Jesus Christ, than isolation from them. How little do we appreciate that our sinful hearts are gasoline-soaked tinder and the society of unbelievers is a shower of sparks!
This is the true concern of such passages as 1 Cor 15.33, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals’” (ESV), and 2 Cor 6.14 ff, which has only a secondary application to the question of Christians marrying unbelievers:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty (2 Cor 6.14-18).
In our media-saturated culture this surely applies as much to what we watch on television and hear on our iPods as to the kind of people we hang around. Carelessness in contact with ungodly influences has been far more responsible for our failures in the face of temptations and our stunted spiritual growth than we realize.
I know there will be a specious protest against such doctrine. “How can we reach unbelievers if we avoid them?” We answer in two ways. First, we are not advocating total avoidance but only pointless and careless contact. Isolation and integration are both wrong; evangelistic interest in non-Christians is the biblical balance. Second, we cannot reach unbelievers if we become too much like them. This would be apostasy and the loss of God’s power in witness-bearing, and from the perspective of outsiders, this would be to lose our genuine appeal to them by being different from them. The church today is in great danger of being lured away from genuine holiness by a plea of contextualization, adopting the culture and the ways of the world in order to win the world. When it comes to matters of genuine morality, compromise is rather the horrid specter of syncretism,4 roundly condemned throughout the Bible.
PURPOSING TO OVERCOME IT
The reason for the psalmist’s desire to avoid contact with evildoers is critically important for a godly person’s sympathy with him. The Hebrew grammar of the original uses a form that “indicates purpose/result after the preceding imperative.”5 Therefore it has been rendered, “Turn away from me, you evil men, so that I can observe the commands of my God.”
There is a correlation between the company we keep and the spiritual state of our hearts and lives. “Can two walk together unless they be agreed?” (Amos 3.3). This great moral principle is relevant both vertically (our relationship with God) and horizontally (our relationships with fellow human beings). Would you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Pet 3.18)? Then seek as your closest companions those who love him best. Proverbs 13:20 says, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” While this is no fail-safe, it is like fertile soil for your life where true virtue can flourish most easily.
Clearly, the godly life is here characterized as keeping God’s commandments, and this conception is not at all restricted to the Old Testament. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14.15). Paul said to the Christians of the church at Corinth, “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but what matters is keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor 7.19). Away with disdain for law-keeping among today’s licentious professing Christians! “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5.3). For this noblest of reasons, let us be very careful about our choice of close friends and entertainment. Amen.
Notes:
1. DBLSD #8317.
2. In loc.
3. From Reflections on the Psalms (1958), cited by Boice.
4. “Syncretism is the reshaping of Christian beliefs and practices through cultural accommodation so that they consciously or unconsciously blend with those of the dominant culture. It is the blending of Christian beliefs and practices with those of the dominant culture so that Christianity loses its distinctive nature and speaks with a voice reflective of its culture. Syncretism [often] develops because the Christian community attempts to make its message and life attractive, alluring, and appealing to those outside the fellowship” (JMAT 10:2, Fall 2006, p. 92).
5. NET Bible Notes, in loc.