Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not the spirit of thy holiness from me.
David wrote this prayer after the prophet Nathan confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba. It is the cry of a man afraid of losing two things he cannot live without: God's presence and God's Spirit. Can a believer today pray the same words?
David had watched what happened to the king before him, and that memory shaped this prayer.
The danger of losing the presence, help and power of the Holy Spirit was a very real one. King Saul, Israel's first king, had known the power of the Spirit in his life, but because of his failures the Spirit of God left him (1 Samuel 10:6, 10; 1 Samuel 11:6; 1 Samuel 16:14). Remembering this is what made David pray as he did. Note too that the Spirit of God worked with great power in Samson, a judge of Israel... Then Samson betrayed his Nazirite vow — his vow of separation to God — to the cunning Delilah, and lost his strength. After that, there are no more references to the Spirit working in him.
For David, the Spirit was the very thing that made him feel his sin. And he knew he had no claim left on Him.
Do not take from me the One who presses on my heart and conscience the sense of evil before God; the struggles of a troubled soul; the working of the heart before Him... But David feels that he has forfeited everything — every right, title and claim. God's mercies and steadfast love are the only ground on which God keeps everything He had given him.
David asks first not to be cast away. He does not yet rest in settled assurance of God's favour, but he cannot live outside God's presence.
The soul taught in this way cannot do without the presence of God. Its one dread is to be cast out of it. It does not yet understand grace and the certainty of God's favour, but it cannot do without His presence. To be shut out of that presence would be everlasting misery — and so it truly would be. The more clearly the soul sees Him, the more it feels this.
If the Spirit could be taken from David, what was He doing in believers before Christ came at all?
He prays that this Spirit might not be taken from him, and that he might not lose the sense of his God's presence. The prophet Haggai says this same Spirit stayed with the people after all their failures, and in spite of the exile in Babylon. Some have found this verse difficult; I see no difficulty in it. The Old Testament saints could not have done any good without the Holy Spirit. Take Him from them, and all their joy and comfort ceased and gave way to darkness. This is what David prays will not happen. There cannot be a moment's doubt that the Spirit worked in the Old Testament saints. The question is whether He was present in the same way, living in them, on the ground of Christ's work and glory, joining them to a risen Head in heaven. That, of course, could not be. The work was not yet done, and the man Jesus had not yet entered into the glory.
One writer sets David's prayer beside what Paul writes to Christians about the Spirit.
Notice also how different this is from the language of Psalm 51: "take not your Holy Spirit from me." Paul, even when he presses that we should not grieve the Holy Spirit, never hints that He may be taken away. On the contrary, in the same breath he assures us that He has sealed us for the day of redemption... Where does this difference come from? Not, I hardly need to say, from a higher inspiration in Paul the apostle than in David the king. It comes from the necessary change in the Spirit's relation to the believer, a change God has revealed, since Jesus died and rose and went to heaven.
Cleansing is not where this prayer ends.
Now fit for God's presence, and filled with the Spirit, he would be led back into the joy of salvation. A "willing spirit" would hold him up, in contrast to his past sin in defiance of God. The repentant sinner, now restored, could teach others the ways of God, so that sinners would be turned to God.
- Fear — David prayed with Saul in view: a king who had known the Spirit's power and lost it, as Samson also did.
- Forfeit — He claims nothing. He knows he has lost all right and title, and rests only on God's mercy.
- Presence — What he dreads most is not punishment. It is losing the face of God.
- Change — Jesus died, rose and ascended. Now the Spirit seals the believer for the day of redemption. The warning is no longer that He may leave, but that He may be grieved.
- Purpose — Restoration ends in usefulness. Cleansed, filled and glad again, the forgiven man teaches others God's ways.