Psalm 53

I don't want to live like a fool.

A fool moves about every day as if there is no God. For the fool there is no uncaused Cause who made all things. No one said, “Let there be light,” and it was so. No one judged each day of creation and called it “good.” There was no eternal Word that spoke all things into existence. There was no Spirit hovering over the face of the waters, poised to bring order and beauty into the cosmos.

For the fool, there is no present God who knows his days before any one of them happens. There is no one who knows the heart of man and who plans his steps. There is no coming judgment, no eternal purpose to unite all things in God's Son, and no salvation through the righteousness and death of a Redeemer. There is no Holy Spirit who is changing anyone by the will of God. The fool knows of no eternal Father who loves anyone.

These denials of the revealed wisdom of God in the Scriptures have consequences. Though the fool might resist the exposure of his own moral corruption, his blindness concerning his own wickedness does not automatically make him pure. The fool still has sin, even if he does not believe that there is such a thing. Since no one is the Supreme Good and Judge in his understanding, the fool moves toward a distorted understanding of self-interest and toward the natural corruptions that come from the ignorance of God.

This is where all mankind would be according to our fallen nature. “There is none who does good.” What seems to refer only to a portion of people who are not the people of God in this psalm, is actually the story of all mankind according to our sinful nature. This is very clear from Romans 3, where the Apostle Paul, using the words in this psalm, shows that all are under sin, and that no man seeks God.

I don't want to live that way. Christ have mercy!

I want to believe that a good life can be lived. This can only happen by grace. God, who prepared good works in advance so that I would walk in them, must first make me alive in Christ, and lead me to know him and to love him. This is the only way for man after the fall. All his believing in God and good living in the way of the Lord, must be from God.

As one person evaluates another we are able to identify those who we judge to be “good.” There is something to this. The serial adulterer, the schemer who steals from the elderly, and the loveless religious hypocrite commit offenses that are truly worse than the kind neighbor who doubts the existence of God. Yet “God looks down from heaven on all the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.” In His holy eyes, there is no one who merits the title “good” after sin has entered the world through one man.

All have fallen away. Together they have become corrupt. They do evil in secret and even publicly; individually and collectively. They violate the commandments of God in thought, word, and action; in what they do, and in what they fail to do. “There is none who does good, not even one.”

This is what verse 3 tells us, yet the very next verse makes a distinction between “those who work evil” and “my people.” How can anyone be counted by God as one of His people?

A new man came, not from the dust of the earth, but from heaven. He was truly righteous in himself. His commendation came from God directly; at His birth, at His baptism, at His transfiguration, and especially through His resurrection and ascension into heaven. He is at the right hand of the Father by His own merit. We are in Him by His grace. Because of Him, and because of the grace and love of God, we are able to cry out to God as “our Father,” and He hears us. We are counted as the people of God.

The Lord cares about His children, and He will not allow them to be abused forever by those around them. God hears the cries of His chosen ones. Those who work evil against them treat them like bread to be consumed according to their own will. These enemies of Israel and the church do not call upon God. They seem ignorant of the judgment that is coming against them. God will bring their days to an end. He has rejected them. They remain in their iniquities, and they will be put to shame. The secrets of their hearts will be laid bare, and God will say, “I never knew you.”

There will come a day when salvation will come for Israel. That salvation will come out of Zion; not merely the Zion below, but the Lord's Zion above, the place of His powerful presence in heaven, where Christ, the Son of God and Son of David reigns. All who call upon the name of the God of Israel shall be saved, even those from among the Gentiles that have taken refuge in His righteous Son. The hope of that great day gives us present joys, and we rejoice in Him and in His coming. “Let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.”