Year 2, Day 198: Psalm 53

Psalm 53

As I read Psalm 53 with my wife, this was my first reaction: “Well, that’s a cheery one.”  In case you missed it, that quote was supposed to read with sarcasm.  Psalm 53 presents a very bleak and gloomy perspective on humanity.

There are people in this world who say, “There is no God.”  Hopefully without sounding judgmental and holier-than-thou – the psalmist has a single word to describe a person who takes such a stance: “fool.”  I want to be careful here, because I don’t really want to insult anyone.  Every single human being is guilty of this label.

Sure, there might be people out there who can honestly confess that they can’t ever remember a time in their life that they didn’t believe in God.  I’m one of those people.  I can honestly say that as far back as I remember I can confess to believing that God is real.  But, that doesn’t mean that I always lived like it.  Quite often, God has been some academic construct in my head to whom I attributed belief but in practice I lived as though He wasn’t really there.  Just because I confessed to believing that God is real does not mean that I lived that way. 

So, the label in verse one applies to me, too.  At those times in life when I am not living as though God is my sole authority I am a fool.  There is no way around it.  Furthermore, I am confident that every person who has ever lived has had moments in life where they have lived as though God was not their authority.  So we are all guilty of being a fool at some point in our life.  Verse 1 is not a condemnation against some of humanity, it is a declaration against us all at one point or another in our life.

This conversation leads us nicely into verses 2 and 3.  I’m going to be blunt.  I think we should really take these verses to heart.  This is one place where the Bible is absolutely authoritative and we as humans tend to ignore it.  We need to stop that and embrace the truth that these verses confess.

God looks down from heaven to see if there are any people who genuinely seek after God.  But then you read verse 3 and hear those words.  There is nobody who is good.  There is nobody who does good.  There is nobody who makes good happen.  The Hebrew language is clear on this point.  Neither anybody nor anything is, does, or makes good.

Now, that can be some pretty hard truth to embrace.  Nobody is good.  So the next time you go to a funeral and hear, “He was such a good person,” you can know that the statement is a lie.  The next time you hear someone talk about themselves and say, “I’m a good person at heart,” you know that statement is a lie.  The next time you think that you are such a good person you can know that thought is a lie.  The reality is that there is nobody who is good.  That’s just honest theology right there.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally do something good.  It doesn’t mean that the same isn’t true for you.  We do occasionally speak truth and do what is right!  But the only reason that this happens is because of the presence of God in our life.

To return to my earlier examples, it is proper at a funeral to say something like, “God really shone through him,” or even, “God’s goodness was evident in him.”  Or it is proper to hear someone say about themselves, “God is really trying to transform me into something good.” 

It is certainly proper to think of oneself as a person in whom God is trying to accomplish good.  But hopefully you see the difference.  When we accept that there is nobody who is good, it forces our language to shift so that the glory goes to God and not to us.  Isn’t that really what worship of God is all about anyway?  Why would any of us feel better about calling ourselves good when we could take the opportunity to proclaim God’s goodness instead?  Is my goodness anything next to god’s goodness?

The psalm ends with a great prophecy that is much in line with what I’ve already said.  Oh that salvation would come out of Zion – and has!  Jesus Christ has come so that we can be redeemed.  Jesus Christ has comes so that we can be forgiven.  It is through Jesus Christ that we can have the understanding that while there is nobody who is good on the planet – there is absolutely good that happens when God works through us!  We may not be inherently good; but through the grace of God, the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, and the real presence of the Holy Spirit we can know goodness and we can seek after Him!

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