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This article is part of Stephen Paulson’s series on the Psalms.
The Fifth Psalm is an amazing diamond in the rough. By the time Luther was finished with it in his Second Psalm Commentary, he had discovered the greatest slogan of all time: “The Cross alone is our Theology!”
1-2 To the chief Musician upon Nehiloth, A Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray (KJV).
David is really the one who discovered this “cross alone” when he was faced with a series of attacks upon his own faith. In the previous Psalm, David merely begged God to remove his sufferings. But in this Psalm, he let fly a forceful complaint against his enemies: “Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray” (Ps. 5:1-2). There are only two parts to any worship, and David exercises them both here:
1) Prayer. You’ll notice David carefully notes which God he is praying to.
2) Proclamation that seeks to hear God’s word again. David prays in order that the Lord will, in turn, speak to him, just as we worship or attend a service in order to pray so that we hear a true proclamation from God himself.
The banner at the top of this Psalm is usually translated: “To the Chief Musician; for the flutes, a Psalm of David” but it is not so simply translated. The Hebrew word “nahal” or “Nehiloth” sounds like “flute,” but really means “inheritance.” David’s enemies are hypocrites, deceitful workers, and false preachers who seduce and seek to steal the true inheritance from God’s people. What is that inheritance? It is not the law, but Christ. David’s enemies seek to steal this from him by using “human traditions.” Later, Jesus complains similarly against the Pharisees and Scribes who were asking why his disciples do not eat with “baptized hands.” Jesus retorted with a sharp sermon from Isaiah 29:13: “This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:6-7).
3-8 My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy: and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. Lead me, O LORD, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face.
The crucial matter for a prayer like David’s is to find the one and only true God to hear his plea, and then to pray with zeal as only David could: “in the morning I direct my prayer to you” (Ps. 5:3). David’s “sacrifice” is not a lamb but a complaint-prayer to the true God against those who delight in wickedness, evil doers, boastful liars, bloodthirsty and deceitful men (Psalm 5:4- 6). Then, when he prays, he not only “groans” (v.1a), he roars: “But, I through the abundance of your mercy will enter your house” (Psalm 5:7a). David has now made the contrasts clear between himself and his enemies, and between God and himself. The reason David dares to roar out his complaint to God, unlike his enemies’ false prayers to their false gods, is that David knows that his enemies are self-justifiers. That is their sin. David, on the other hand, has entered God’s house “in the fear of you” (Ps. 5:7b). He knows God’s righteousness is not mans’: “Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness” (Ps. 5:8a).
There are two kinds of righteousness: that of my enemies’ self righteousness, and that of God making me righteous in the face of my enemies.
No wonder Martin Luther perked up at this amazing theology from David: it is the majestic teaching of the chief doctrine of justification by faith alone. There are two kinds of righteousness: that of my enemies’ self righteousness, and that of God making me righteous in the face of my enemies. “Because of my enemies; make your way straight before me” (Ps. 5:8) In other words, straighten me out, God! Immanuel Kant once famously called us, “the crooked timber of humanity”, but even he did not know the depth of our problem. David understood that the solution was not “my way” to God, but God’s way to him.
9-10 For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue. Destroy thou them, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against thee.
Now an amazing thing opens up before us. By the time David composed this hymn-prayer in Psalm 5, he had discovered the great teaching of faith that a sinner is not made righteous by works of the law, but by mercy through faith. God has made him righteous merely by declaring it so. The lies of his enemies are exposed: “for there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction!” They are not just a little wrong, nor is worship of their false god just a little different than his—their sin goes right down to the marrow of their throats, or in Hebrew, their nephesh. What comes out of their mouths then? “Their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue!” (Mark 5:9). It is as Jesus taught: “there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:15).
David then said it outright: “Make them bear their guilt, O Lord; let them fall by their own counsels…. cast them out for they have rebelled against you” (Ps. 5:10). Harsh treatment! They have rebelled against you, and their open mouth is nothing but a grave so let them eat their own words! Let self-justifiers bear their own guilt! In this specific request, David obliterates the false teaching of justification by works of the law. But what about David—and us? When we enter his house, what do we ask for from our merciful God for ourselves?
11-12 But let all those that put their trust [hope] in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee. For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.
We have now reached a momentous moment in theology and history, in these simple words: “But let all who take refuge in you rejoice!” (v. 11). In one sense, the great Reformation teaching came suddenly to Luther —like a lightning bolt. In another sense, however, it took time to declare it fully. The Vulgate, or Latin, translation of this verse used the verb “spero” to translate “take refuge in” (in the same way the Hebrew and Greek do). The King James version is better than modern English translations in this regard: “But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice (Ps. 5:11). That little word, trust (and its connection to hope), broke open the great teaching on righteousness for Luther that he began expressing in two great slogans: “We are justified by faith alone, apart from merit” and “The cross alone is our theology.”
“Hope” is not a human work or merit; it is a divine gift freely given to the undeserving, unmerited sinner.
One of the most common mis-teachings on Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 13:13, “faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest is love,” says that what Paul supposedly meant to describe is upward progress which starts with small “faith,” and climbs toward the higher goal of love. Yet in Psalm 5, faith, hope, and love were not the upward movement demanded by the law. Instead, they describe God’s downward movement to sinners, a movement which is contrary to our own wills. That means “hope” is not a human work or merit; it is a divine gift freely given to the undeserving, unmerited sinner. “Let all who hope in you rejoice!” Rejoice at what? That they made their way up to God? No, that He had come down “to spread your protection over them in order that those who love your name may exult in you” (Ps. 5:11b).
If that were not clear enough, David ends with a flourish: “For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield” (Ps. 5:12). Yet everything depends upon grasping what David means by “you bless the righteous…” This came to be the great moment when Luther broke out of his years-old maze of harsh, deep, monastic, mystical theology that had by this time nearly destroyed him. He explained it to his students later (First Antinomian Disputation of Dec. 18, 1537; WA 39/1, 389:18-390; LW 73: 92): I was “in that camp [of mystical theology] for some time, not without great harm to myself.” By reading this Psalm from David, Luther broke free, like Plato from the dark cave: he had discovered the true nature of hope in the word “promissio” or promise.
What is hope then, if it is not desiring and wishing for something highest, best, and greatest (which we can’t see and don’t have, but really want more than anything)? What did David mean by: “let all who hope in you rejoice?” What did it mean to be “covered with favor as a blessing of the righteous?”
First, I’ll tell you what it is not. It is not God announcing that I have climbed the ladder of the law and that he will thus proceed to reward me.
Instead, Luther realized that hope was either infused, or in something outside of you. If infused, such hope would be inside you as people like Augustine liked to say, and therefore a divine virtue that is likewise a human work. Yet, that would merely mean that you “hoped” one day the law that is presently accusing you would, in the end, turn around and reward you as a holy, righteous man of merit. If outside of you, that hope functions not according to the law at all. Such amazing hope would be without work, without reward, and instead “through the abundance of your mercy” (Ps. 5:7).
Aha! At last, Luther lands on the reality that “hope” is in something present, real, and opposite all our own, inner “desires.” It is hope in the cross of Jesus Christ, and it is in Christ’s cross because it is not only in a past historical event, but also in a present promise made to me—a sinner—on account of the blood of the Lamb! Monks and mystics had turned hope into striving for a distant, eternal future by making present faith into a future, perpetual uncertainty (i.e. “hope”). The less sure you were of your salvation, the holier you were supposed to be. The law was supposedly given to remove any present assurance we have of God’s mercy! But David said the opposite: “The boastful shall not stand before your eyes!” (Ps. 5:4). God refuses to let us “rise” by using the law as he or she wants—instead he uses the law to “bind all under sin” (Rom. 3:9), and then tells us something that seems impossible: “Where there is no law, there is no sin” (Rom. 9:32).
At first this threw Luther into the lion’s den: Dear Lord! Isn’t the law everywhere and eternal? Where then can we flee? Suddenly, Luther recognized that we do not climb to God on the ladder of the law; instead, “let them fall by their own counsel…but let all who hope in you rejoice…spread your protection over them” (Ps. 5:10-11). Then the great gospel message can be heard: “Salvation descends all the way from the divinity of Christ unto sin; and we ascend from sin to salvation in Christ’s humanity” (Luther, WA 5, 160). Negation of our sin is not done by us (negating our bad desires or past sins), but to us. And what God does to us is to make a promise: "For the object of faith and of hope is a freely-promising God, or the promising of the word itself and nothing else! And if this Word be not observed always and everywhere; hope must of necessity fall…For upon this rock of the sure promise and infallible Word of God is the church of Christ built" (WA 5, 175).
The cross alone is our theology because, by it, God has a new word that is not the law at all. It is a promise.
The law itself must be negated with a promise. Once he had this truth, Luther could finish his lecture on Psalm 5 with our great Reformation slogan: CRUX sola est nostra Theologia, or “Christ alone is our Theology!” It was not until the theology of the cross that Luther was able to say what our hope was actually in. Hope is not in the cross, in negation, or in damnation. Faith itself is not negation; it is not a motion or even “elicited act” of yours that seeks merit or reward by law. The cross is not my salvation because I have learned to accept the law’s punishment. The cross alone is our theology because, by it, God has a new word that is not the law at all. It is a promise. As David says: “Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness” (Ps. 5:8). God’s righteousness is created when first, he kills the old sinner so that there is nothing left to try to climb the imaginary ladder of “hope.” Then, second, he raises up a new creature whose sins have been removed by Christ’s cross.
This little word in Psalm 5:11 (“Let all who hope in you, rejoice!”) was David’s great discovery of faith. This ultimately gave Luther his own breakthrough: “The Cross alone is our Theology.” Hope is here now, entirely in the promise from Christ that our sins are taken and killed. We only await someone telling us that very promise so that our hope has something free, present, and freeing to cling to.
