Even as David also declares the blessedness of the man to whom God reckons righteousness without works
Paul has just used Abraham to show that God counts a person righteous by faith. Now he calls a second witness, David — and the verse raises two questions: why David, and what it means for God to "count" righteousness to anyone.
Someone could dismiss Abraham by saying the law had not yet come. So Paul adds a man who lived under it.
The apostle brings forward two great witnesses against the idea that righteousness comes on the principle of law... God made the promises to Abraham, and he was the heir of the world. The throne and kingdom belonged to David... No Jew would have disputed the testimony of these two witnesses. One lived four hundred and thirty years before God gave the law, and he declares that justification was by faith. The other lived in the age of law, and he declares that justification was without works.
David does not say who this man is.
"David speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works." Whoever that person may be. What qualifies someone for this blessing is not birth or any other privilege. It is simply a sinner's capacity to receive God's mercy.
David's own record puts this to the test.
Nothing is said of David's works. Instead he spoke of his sins and his wrongdoing. No man in the Old Testament records fell lower than David in his sins against God and man, and yet we learn that his sins did not exclude him from the blessing... His sins were ten thousand times worse because he knew God's mercy. Even so, they did not shut him out of the blessing of justification. It is a blessing into which the works of the best man cannot bring him, and from which the sins of the worst man need not exclude him. It is altogether of and from God.
The word does not describe a quantity of merit moved from one account to another. It describes how God regards the person.
Imputed righteousness means the character or quality in which the person appears in God's sight. It is not the cause of his appearing that way... It is not only that He does not count the sin the man has done. He does not view him as in sin, but as in righteousness... So the word used for imputed righteousness is not the word for a righteous act, but the word for righteousness itself — not an act or a sum of things done, but a state. God reckons him to be in that state.
David's psalm speaks only of sins forgiven and covered. Paul quotes it to explain what being counted righteous is.
The word for forgiveness only appears once in the whole letter. It comes when the Apostle quotes David's words from Psalm 32... This shows us, however, that counting righteousness to a person — that is, justification — comes to the same thing here as forgiveness.
Yet Paul's own words go further than the psalm he quotes.
David had only the dim light of foreshadowings and prophecies. He could take comfort only from the negative side: the Lord will not count sin against the believer. Paul stands in the full light of Christ's redeeming work. He gives us the comfort of the positive side: "God counts righteousness apart from works." How good it is to see the fuller light coming out.
God does not set justice aside to bless a sinner.
Upon what equitable basis is He able to impute righteousness to a man apart from works? Psalm 40 will answer. There we hear the Incarnate Son saying: "Sacrifice and offering you have not desired... Behold, I have come to do your will, O God." The atoning sacrifice of Calvary has replaced for ever all the offerings of the old sacrificial system. It enables God to pardon and justify, in full righteousness, every sinner who believes in Jesus.
God means this to be enjoyed, not just believed.
It is clear then that not to have sin reckoned is, in other words, to be reckoned to be in a righteous condition. God would have every believer to know the blessedness of this in his own soul.
- Witness. David is Paul's second witness after Abraham. One lived before the law, the other under it. God justified both the same way.
- Without. Righteousness comes apart from works. The best man's works cannot earn it. The worst man's sins need not bar him from it.
- Counted. To count righteousness is not to move a sum of merit into someone's account. It is to reckon the person righteous before God.
- Covered. Justification and forgiveness meet here. David could only say sin is not counted. Paul says righteousness is.
- Ground. Christ's sacrifice lets God count a sinner righteous and stay just. He means every believer to enjoy that blessing.
Blessed [they] whose lawlessnesses have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered
Paul has just used Abraham to prove that God counts a man righteous apart from works. Now he calls a second witness: David, who spoke not of his works but of his sins. The words Paul borrows from him describe a happiness that rests on what God refuses to hold against a man.
Paul is arguing with people who honoured both Moses and David. So the question is whether David agrees with the gospel or with the law's verdict.
Take again the testimony of David. Does he agree with the gospel, or contradict Moses, who gave the law? David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, confirms both. He calls blessed the very people whom the law could only curse... This is clearly justification, not by good works, but despite evil ones. It is God's grace blessing, not His law cursing, where there was no righteousness, but only lawlessness and sin.
Paul brought in Abraham as the best of men, and even his works could not earn the blessing. David comes in from the opposite direction.
On the other hand, David says nothing about his works. Instead he speaks of his iniquities and his sins. No man in the Old Testament record fell lower than David in his sins against God and man. Yet we learn that his sins did not exclude him from the blessing... It is a blessing into which the works of the best man cannot bring him. It is a blessing from which the sins of the worst man need not exclude him.
David sinned deliberately, and still came to rejoice that God did not charge that guilt to him (C. E. Stuart).
The verse does not use one word twice. Each verb describes a different thing God does with sin.
The transgression is FORGIVEN. Here the word means to lift away from. The great burden is removed: it no longer weighs upon the soul and conscience before God. How great is the blessedness of being forgiven! The sin is COVERED, it is concealed, blotted out of God's sight, so as to offend Him no more.
"Covered" is not a soft word for ignored. Behind it stands a sacrifice.
The Hebrew word employed is Kaphar, which means to cover. It is only by the death of Christ, by His atoning blood, that sin is covered, and its consequences averted. So we read, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered" (Psalm 32:1)... "For it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul" (Leviticus 17:11). How beautifully the New Testament answers to all this: "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).
Notice what David does not claim. His happiness is not the happiness of an innocent man.
But this assumes the man is a sinner, not righteous in himself. The question is what God is in grace toward such a man, not what the man is toward God... His blessedness was that God did not impute to him the sins he had committed. It was not that he was righteous in himself before God. For man, righteousness lay in the grace of God. Here that righteousness amounts to God not imputing sins to a man guilty of committing them. He imputes no sin at all.
Yet Paul introduces the psalm as a description of the man God credits with righteousness. Not charging sin and crediting righteousness are one blessing seen from two sides (A. J. Pollock).
This blessing is not held back for a later day. It is not reserved for advanced believers either.
Our first need, as sinners, is forgiveness; and there is forgiveness with God... This blessedness is a present possession: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses" (Ephesians 1:7). And this portion belongs to the simplest believer as much as to the most advanced. We read, "I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake" (1 John 2:12).
- Witness. David is Paul's second proof: Israel's own king blessed the very people the law could only curse.
- Empty-handed. He brings no works, only sins. The best man's record cannot earn this blessing. The worst man's record cannot bar him from it.
- Lifted. "Forgiven" means the load is carried away from the conscience; the weight no longer rests on the man.
- Covered. "Covered" is atonement language. The blood of Christ hides sin from God's sight; God does not simply overlook it.
- Blessed. The man is happy not because he is innocent. He is happy because God will not charge sin to him, and credits him with righteousness instead. He holds that today; it is not a hope for later.
blessed [the] man to whom [the] Lord shall not at all reckon sin.
Paul has already used Abraham to prove that righteousness comes by faith. Now he calls a second witness, David, who describes the happiness of a man whose sin is real but whom God refuses to charge with it.
Paul is quoting witnesses his readers could not dismiss.
Abraham and David were the two men a Jew would accept as authority beyond dispute.
David is an unlikely second witness. His record is not one of works.
Nothing is said about David's works; instead, he spoke of his iniquities and his sins. No man in the Old Testament records fell lower than David in his sins against God and man. Yet his sins did not exclude him from the blessing… The works of the best man cannot bring him into this blessing, and the sins of the worst man need not shut him out of it.
Older wordings say the Lord will not "impute" or "reckon" sin; the ESV says He will not "count" it. Either way, the man is not innocent. God keeps no account against him.
But this assumes the man is a sinner and not righteous in himself. The question was what God was in grace to such a person, not what he was toward God… His blessedness was not that he was righteous in himself before God. It was that God did not charge him with the sins he had committed. Righteousness for man was found in the grace of God.
One writer finds a picture of this in the story of Balaam. He was hired to curse Israel, and Israel was murmuring and rebelling in the wilderness at the time. (The ESV reads "misfortune" and "trouble" for "iniquity" and "perverseness".)
Sin was plainly there. Yet when the enemy tried to curse them, what was Balaam forced to say? "He has not looked on iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen perverseness in Israel." The iniquity was there, but God said, "I do not look on it." The perverseness was obvious, but God said, "I do not see it." We know on what ground God could say that of Israel, and does say it of us — the blood of the Lamb.
Some renderings put it more strongly: "shall not at all reckon sin." The promise looks forward, not only back.
It is not that they are counted righteous because they never sinned, for all have sinned. Their sins have been covered and their iniquities forgiven. And it is not only their past sins that Christ's atoning death has covered. Infinite grace says more, and says it in perfect righteousness: "The Lord shall not at all reckon sin."
God is not overlooking sin. The question of sin was settled somewhere else.
God forsook Him during the three hours of darkness, when His soul was made an offering for sin. No doubt it was then that the great question of sin was gone into and settled forever, condemned at the cross… He bore all the judgment of God due to us and died, and therefore nothing can be imputed to us who believe.
This ties the believer's security to Christ's own standing before God:
Our failure will never in the least impair the relationships that God has established between us and Himself, because He has established them in Christ. So until sin can be imputed to Christ, it cannot be imputed to the believer.
This is not indifference to sin. God still deals with His people about their sin, and it costs them something.
If a believer does sin, he loses his communion and becomes very unhappy. The Lord will deal with him about that sin, as one who belongs to Him, but the sin is not counted against him in the eternal sense.
David could state the blessing only as a negative. Paul, writing after the cross, adds what God puts on the account instead.
David, in the dim light of pictures and prophecies, could only take comfort from the negative: the Lord will NOT impute sin to the believer. Paul, in the full light of the redemptive work of Christ, gives us the comfort of the positive: "God imputes RIGHTEOUSNESS without works."
- Witness — Paul's proof is David, the man who fell lower than any other in the Old Testament record. The best man's works cannot earn this blessing; the worst man's sins need not forfeit it.
- Verdict — The sin is real. What changes is the account. God does not count it, because the basis is grace, not innocence.
- Ground — Christ bore the whole judgment due to us and died. That is why God charges the believer with nothing.
- Reach — "Shall not at all reckon" covers the future as well as the past. God closed the account; He did not just bring it up to date.
- Result — Sin still costs communion, and the Lord deals with His own about it. But it never re-opens the account. In its place God counts righteousness.