JUST DON’T "DO" IT!

The Psalms of David are beautiful. Yes, it is because they are scripture and, also, because they communicate the possibility of an intimacy, dare I say honesty, with God that is absent in surface-level Christianity. Our pretenses display hearts that have are not honest with the Lord and, because of that, lack the transparency that David endlessly enjoys. It is from this ongoing and relationally saturated communion with God that David can utter some of the most radical statements to the Lord. One such statement is found in Psalm 17. He writes,

3 You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night, you have tested me, and you will find

nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress. 4 With regard to the works of man,

by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent. 5 My steps have held fast to

your paths; my feet have not slipped.

David says that the Lord has examined him as well as tested him and has found nothing. Absolutely incredible that he would utter such a thing. All of us know that David’s heart was as human, foul, and untrustworthy as the rest of ours. Yet he says that the Lord, who sees and knows all, found nothing in him. That puzzled me and caused me to dig a bit deeper to gain some level of understanding to ease a but of my perplexity. Here is what I found, and it was gold: David understands integrity, not as the absence of affections that are sinful but the ability to resist those inclinations from manifesting in his life. When sin persists, just don’t do it!

It is not that David was saying that God could not find anything in him. There is much to be found in him and all of us. What David was stating, however, is that his lips and life were not controlled by the emotions and affections. He resisted saying out of his mouth what he felt or thought, and he also resisted being lured by the evident enticement of the ways of the wicked (See Psalm 18:25-26, especially the last part of verse 26). It is not that David was beyond sin, that would be heresy. Instead, what David is teaching us is something we must come to embrace to live freely and authentically before God and man:

We can live with integrity before God and man by allowing our lips and life to be controlled

and dominated by the gospel rather than sin. Even in those times when our sin is crouching at

the door.

This is not to say that our affections do not matter. They do! They need to be sanctified as well since Christian maturity is evidenced by a greater consistency between our actions and affections. However, the deceitfulness of sin in the heart is something that remains with us until death (Jeremiah 17:9) and the antagonizing enticements of that sin will always need to be killed by even the most devoted Christian (Colossians 3:5). What this does mean, however, is that by and through the power of the Holy Spirit we are enabled, by grace, to not yield to the deceitfulness of sin, to borrow a puritan phrase (Romans 6:12-14; 1 Corinthians 15:10; Titus 2:11-12; Hebrews 3:12-15; James 4:7, 8).

The New Testament teaches us what David is saying in Psalm 17: by the power of the Holy Spirit “just don’t do it. The Apostle John wrote: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). One of John’s purposes for writing was “that you may not sin.” John sees rejecting the enticements of sin as a real possibility and expectation in the life of the believer even when the heart wants sin. It is not that we can live sinlessly since that would contradict scripture (1 John 1:8-10).

What John is saying, however, is what Paul and the rest of the New Testament teaches namely that we do not have to always yield to the temptation. Therefore, in the words of David, when we say no to sin and have overcome it, we can say that the Lord has tried us and tested us and has found nothing. We have acted consistently with the truth even when our hearts felt otherwise.

Integrity is simply not saying what our heart feels and not acting on what our heart wants when those feelings and wants are contrary to a life that displays the beautiful witness of and to Christ. The man or woman seeking to honor the Lord with the whole of their being will not only be incessantly saying to their soul, “Just Don’t Do It!” but they will beg, through prayer and labor for, in the Word, the sanctification of their affections as well.