(To the chief Musician. [A Psalm] of David.) The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They have corrupted themselves, they have done abominable works there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14 is not a survey of what the world believes. It is God's verdict on it. And that verdict starts inside a person, long before it shows in what he does. The verse ties three things together: a private thought about God, a corrupt life, and a search that finds no exception.
The denial sits in the heart, not on the lips. One writer shows how much a person can say without speaking a word:
Oh the heart! What a source of mischief and misery it is! Scripture says it well: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." And so we read that "The fool has said in his heart, 'No God!'" (Ps. 14:1). Such a saying may never have reached the lips. It may never have been put into words out loud. But in the unspoken language of the heart, the words come out: "No God!"
The denial has a motive. Conscience already expects judgment, so the mind looks for any excuse to remove the One who judges:
Man gained the knowledge of good and evil in the fall. It has shaped him so that judgment is the only action of God's power he understands. Of course he resists that judgment, and blasphemes God. The reason is his conscience: it tells him he must be the object of His righteous vengeance. So, to calm his conscience, he tries to persuade himself that he is not wicked. He hides himself from God, like Adam. And in his folly he grabs at the smallest excuse for denying His existence. "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" (Psalms 14; 53.)
The same writer traces the wish behind the words — no authority, no restraint, no reckoning — and calls it something present in everyone: "Sin has produced that wish; and how easy to move from the idea to the belief, from the wish to the word, 'No God!'"
The problem is not a shortage of evidence:
The universe holds millions of proofs of wonderful design. Bias is as blind to them as a bat is in the light of the noonday sun. Bias is not a matter of the head, but of the heart. "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Ps. 14:1).
The verse moves in a single breath from "the fool" to "they." That shift is the point:
The "fool" of the first sentence becomes a multitude in the very next. They "are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good." This is what man away from God comes to by nature. God is the true life of man. The body decays once it is apart from the soul that gives it life, and the soul decays in the same way once it is apart from God. There can be no exception here. No law is surer than this: "there is none who does good."
Commentators differ on how far the verse looks ahead. Some read the fool as a figure of a coming time of open apostasy:
The characteristic man of this terrible time will be "the fool" — the man who has no fear of God. In his heart he says, "No God"; and his corrupt and abominable life shows the thought of his heart.
This verse is not left in the Psalms. It reappears in the New Testament as the charge against everyone:
The first quotation is from Psalm 14. There the words are joined to the statement that "the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God." What follows gives the result of God's searching gaze. So the truth here is not a description of how we appear before one another. It is how we appear before God, as fallen children of Adam — as in the flesh. In the quotations from this Psalm God strips us of everything we might boast in as natural men — the very things we naturally use to justify ourselves before Him.
The right response to such a sweeping verdict is not argument but surrender:
In the face of statements as sweeping as these, anyone who pleads righteousness with God has no feeling for the real state of things. It suits us all better to admit that we are truly guilty. Then we can throw ourselves without reserve on God's unlimited grace.
- Heart — the heart says "No God" without a sound. The lips may never say it, but the heart has said it.
- Wish — the denial has a motive. Conscience expects judgment, so a man grabs at any excuse that removes the Judge.
- Bias — this is folly of the heart, not of the mind; design surrounds him and he cannot see it.
- Spread — one fool becomes a multitude. Cut off from God, the soul decays as a body does without the soul: "there is none who does good."
- Refuge — Scripture repeats this verdict to strip away every boast. One move is left: admit the guilt and throw yourself on God's grace.
Jehovah looked down from the heavens upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.
The fool of verse 1 has just said in his heart that there is no God. Heaven's answer is not an immediate blow but a search — God looks across the whole human race to find anyone who wants Him.
This is not God's general awareness of the world. This look has a pattern behind it in Scripture.
Wickedness has reached its height. The world is ripe for judgment, and God looks down upon the children of men as One about to act in judgment. This is not merely the truth that everything is always under God's eye. This is the look that comes before judgment. The Lord came down to see before the judgment at Babel. Again He looked toward Sodom before its destruction (Gen. 18:16); and again we read that the Lord looked upon the host of the Egyptians before their overthrow (Ex. 14:24).
He already knows the answer. Yet He goes and looks anyway, person by person, so that the verdict rests on evidence.
But Jehovah Himself will give His testimony. He knows every heart perfectly beforehand. Even so, He will not pass sentence except from actual experience. He looks down from heaven and considers every soul of man among the children of Adam. He looks for anyone who truly understands — anyone who, stirred by the need and misery of his condition, seeks after Him whom men's sins have shut off from them.
The verse names two things: understanding and seeking. God ran that search over every person alive.
The great and gracious Creator surveyed the whole human race. He could not see one who wanted Him, or one who even understood the purpose for which he was created!
Because the observer is God, the finding is not a survey of how people rank against their neighbours.
So the truth here is not a description of how we appear before one another. It is how we appear before God, as fallen children of Adam — as in the flesh. In the quotations from this Psalm God strips us of everything we might boast in as natural men. He takes away the things we naturally use to try to justify ourselves before God.
The apostle later quotes this verse against those who assumed the law placed them outside its reach.
The law, he says, belongs to you. You boast that it refers to you exclusively. Very well: hear then what it says about the people, about yourselves. It speaks to you, as you admit. There is not one righteous man among you, then, on whom God can look down from heaven. He quotes Psalm 14:2-3; Isaiah 59:7-8, to set out the judgment pronounced on them by the very oracles they boasted in. So every mouth was shut, and all the world guilty before God.
The failed search does not end the story. It settles who has to make the first move.
Man never thought to find a friend in God. He had no natural confidence in his Creator. He broke with God when he became a sinner, and to this day he has no desire for the breach to be healed. He does not wish to have anything to do with God, and he would never have sought God if left to himself. But God had desires toward man, and if man will not seek God, God will seek him. If there is none who seeks after God, there is a God who seeks after man.
So how does anyone ever come to seek Him?
Are there any who understand and seek God? None whatever, until God by grace works in their hearts... They influence one another, but not for good. God's estimate of people generally is that "there is none who does good, not even one." The only remedy must come from God.
Yet the same psalm still names "the generation of the righteous" (v. 5). Where did they come from?
Though the people were outwardly under law, grace had always been active. What pure law could not achieve, grace had achieved. In the middle of a nation of rebellious sinners, grace produced "the generation of the righteous" (v. 5).
- He looked. This look from heaven matches the look that came before Babel, Sodom and the fall of Egypt's army. It comes just before God acts.
- He looked closely. God already knows every heart. Even so, He inspects each person, so His sentence rests on evidence.
- He looked for one. He searched for one person who understood why he was made and who wanted God.
- He found none. The verdict measures how we stand before God, not how we compare with each other. Paul turns it on the most religious hearers, so every mouth is shut.
- So He came seeking. Since no one seeks God, God seeks man. Everyone who does understand and seek is the fruit of that grace — the "generation of the righteous" in this same psalm.
They have all gone aside, they are together become corrupt there is none that doeth good, not even one.
In verse 2 God looks down from heaven, searching for one person who understands and seeks Him. Verse 3 is the report He brings back. Is this verdict poetry or fact? Does it leave anyone out?
This verdict is not a distant opinion. God searches first, then speaks:
They have not sought nor cared: they have turned aside; they have gone after their lusts; there is none who does good, not even one. What the grace of God does is another matter. Apart from this, evil just repeats itself. One generation follows another, only adding its own sins to its fathers'. This is the result, then, and God Himself is the witness. He certifies it after actually inspecting every single person.
Readers often look for exceptions. The words themselves leave no room for one, and God had said the same about people before:
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5). The words "every," "only" and "continually" leave no room for any redeeming feature in man's condition before God. Again, "The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one" (Ps. 14:2-3). Here again the expressions "all" — "none" — "not even one" — rule out any single redeeming quality in man's condition, as God judges it.
This is not God simply watching, as He always does. In Scripture this kind of look comes before judgment:
Wickedness has reached its peak, so the world is ripe for judgment. God looks down upon the children of men as one about to act in judgment. It is not simply that all is under the eye of God, which is always true, but this is the look that precedes judgment. The Lord came down to see before the judgment at Babel. Again He looked towards Sodom before its destruction (Gen. 18:16); and yet again we read that the Lord looked upon the army of the Egyptians before their overthrow (Ex. 14:24). God sees that the wickedness of man is such that there is no other way to defend His majesty except by judgment.
The psalm's sharpest edge falls on Israel, the nation God had favoured and worked over, and to whom He gave His law:
In Psalm 14 the LORD takes account of the most favoured nation upon the earth... God had taken Israel up and put them in relationship with Himself as His people, and He had spent much labour on them. It is to this people He comes seeking some reward for all His toil. But He has to say, "They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one." He got no return for His labour from the people He had given the law.
Paul later uses the verse to silence religious pride:
The law, he says, belongs to you. You boast that it refers to you exclusively. Very well: then hear what it says of the people, of yourselves. It speaks to you, as you acknowledge. There is not one righteous man among you on whom God can look down from heaven. He quotes Psalm 14:2-3; Isaiah 59:7-8, to set out the judgment pronounced on them by those oracles they boasted in. So every mouth was shut, and all the world guilty before God.
If the verse were the last word, no one could be saved. But grace was already at work in the same psalm:
Though the people were outwardly under law, grace had always been active. What pure law could not do, grace had done. In the middle of a nation of rebellious sinners there was found, through grace, "the generation of the righteous" (v. 5).
Man's search failed. God has a search of His own:
Man never thought to find a friend in God... He wishes not to have to do with God, nor would he ever have sought God if left to himself. But God had desires after man, and if man will not seek God, God will seek him. If there is none that seeks after God, there is a God who seeks after man. He sought after Adam and Eve when they had abandoned Him, and when they were doing their best to make it impossible for Him to find them.
- Searched — God did not guess at this verdict. He looked down and inspected every person before He gave it.
- Sentenced — "All," "none," "not even one" — the words close every loophole. Nothing good in man survives that search.
- Solemn — This particular look is the kind that came before Babel, Sodom and the overthrow of Egypt: judgment is near.
- Spread — Paul aims the verse at the nation that owned the law. Every mouth is shut, and the whole world stands guilty.
- Sought — No one seeks God, so God seeks man. He sought Adam and Eve while they hid, and grace still finds "the generation of the righteous."