The Righteousness That Is Not For Sale Text: 2 Samuel 22:21-25
Introduction: The Scandal of a Clean Conscience
We live in an era that is deeply suspicious of any claim to personal righteousness. Our therapeutic age has taught us that the only acceptable posture is one of perpetual brokenness, a kind of groveling self-deprecation that we mistake for humility. To modern ears, and frankly to many modern Christian ears, David's words in this psalm sound jarring. They sound proud. They sound like the Pharisee in the temple, thanking God that he is not like other men. And so, when we read a passage like this, we are immediately faced with a theological puzzle. How can David, the man who sinned so grievously with Bathsheba, say these things? And how does this square with the central doctrine of our faith, justification by faith alone?
This is not a small question. If we get this wrong, we veer off into one of two ditches. On the one side is the ditch of self-righteous legalism, where we imagine that our acceptance before God is based on our performance. On the other side is the ditch of antinomian slop, where our actual behavior has no connection whatever to our profession of faith. The Scriptures, as always, refuse to be impaled on the horns of our false dilemmas. They present us with a third way, a biblical way.
David's song here, which is nearly identical to Psalm 18, is a reflection on a lifetime of deliverance. He is looking back over the course of his life, from the dangers of Saul to the rebellions of his enemies, and he is testifying to God's faithfulness. But he doesn't just testify to God's actions; he testifies to the basis upon which God acted. God acted, David says, according to my righteousness. This is not the proud boasting of a sinless man. This is the sober testimony of a forgiven man, a man whose life has been characterized by a genuine pursuit of God's ways. It is the testimony of a man who understands that grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning. God's grace does not produce lazy Christians; it produces warriors who fight, and who fight with clean hands.
We must learn to distinguish between the righteousness that gets us into heaven, which is Christ's alone, and the righteousness that God rewards on earth, which is the fruit of that first righteousness worked out in our lives. David is not claiming perfection. He is claiming a direction. He is testifying that, despite his stumbles, the settled pattern of his life has been one of faithfulness. And this is a challenge to us. Does the pattern of our lives provide God with a basis to reward us, or does it require Him to constantly discipline us?
The Text
Yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness;
According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me.
For I have kept the ways of Yahweh, And have not wickedly departed from my God.
For all His judgments were before me, And as for His statutes, I did not depart from them.
I was also blameless toward Him, And I kept myself from my iniquity.
Therefore Yahweh has recompensed me according to my righteousness, According to my cleanness before His eyes.
(2 Samuel 22:21-25 LSB)
The Principle of Recompense (v. 21, 25)
David begins and ends this section with the same foundational principle. God rewards righteousness.
"Yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me... Therefore Yahweh has recompensed me according to my righteousness, According to my cleanness before His eyes." (2 Samuel 22:21, 25)
The word "recompense" simply means to pay back, to render what is due. David is stating a principle of covenant life that runs throughout all of Scripture: God deals with us according to our ways. With the merciful, He shows Himself merciful. With the blameless, He shows Himself blameless. With the crooked, He shows Himself astute (vv. 26-27). This is not salvation by works. This is the relational reality within the covenant. A father doesn't disown his son for tracking mud in the house, but the son's behavior does determine whether he receives a blessing or a correction.
David speaks of his "righteousness" and the "cleanness of my hands." This is not the absolute, perfect righteousness of Christ that justifies us. That is a gift, received by faith alone, and it is alien to us. It is imputed. David is speaking of his personal integrity, his practical obedience. He is talking about the trajectory of his life. When he was accused by Saul, when he was hunted in the wilderness, when Shimei cursed him, in the grand scheme of those conflicts, David had the right of it. He was in the right, and his enemies were in the wrong. His hands were clean relative to the charges of his accusers.
This is a crucial point. Pride is not thinking rightly about yourself; pride is when you set your own assessment of yourself over and against God's assessment. Paul tells us to think of ourselves with sober judgment (Rom. 12:3). If God has given you grace to walk in integrity, it is not pride to acknowledge it; it is pride to deny it and pretend you are a worm when God is treating you like a son. David is not saying, "I earned this." He is saying, "God, you delivered me because I was walking in the way you commanded, and my enemies were not." This is covenant faithfulness, and God honors it.
The Path of Obedience (v. 22-23)
In the next two verses, David explains what this righteousness looks like in practice. It is a life oriented around the Word of God.
"For I have kept the ways of Yahweh, And have not wickedly departed from my God. For all His judgments were before me, And as for His statutes, I did not depart from them." (2 Samuel 22:22-23 LSB)
The foundation of David's claim is that he has "kept the ways of Yahweh." This means he has guarded them, protected them, and walked in them. The Christian life is not a series of disconnected moral choices. It is a path, a way. You are either on God's path or you are on another one. David says he has stayed on the path.
He adds that he has "not wickedly departed" from God. This is a key qualifier. It does not mean he never sinned. The word "wickedly" points to a deliberate, high-handed rebellion, an apostasy. David stumbled, and stumbled horribly. But he never renounced God. He never shook his fist at heaven and declared himself autonomous. Even in his sin with Bathsheba, when confronted by Nathan, his immediate response was repentance: "I have sinned against Yahweh" (2 Sam. 12:13). His heart, his fundamental allegiance, remained with God. A sheep can fall into a mud puddle, but it doesn't want to live there like a pig does. David was a sheep who fell, not a pig who wallowed.
How did he stay on the path? "For all His judgments were before me." David kept the Word of God in front of his face. It was his map, his guide, his standard. He lived his life before the face of God (coram Deo) and before the Word of God. The statutes of God were not an occasional reference for him; they were the constant furniture of his mind. This is the essence of practical sanctification. You cannot obey a law you do not know. You cannot walk in a way you do not see. David's righteousness was a product of his saturation in the Scriptures.
Blameless, Not Sinless (v. 24)
Verse 24 is perhaps the most challenging part of this claim, but it flows directly from what came before.
"I was also blameless toward Him, And I kept myself from my iniquity." (Genesis 1:3 LSB)
The word "blameless" here does not mean sinless. Noah was called blameless (Gen. 6:9), and so was Job (Job 1:1), and we know they were not without sin. To be blameless means to be whole, complete, a man of integrity. It means that there is no outstanding, legitimate charge against you that can stick. It means your conscience is clear before God and man. When David's enemies accused him of treason against Saul, the charge was false. He was blameless in that matter. His life was wholehearted in its devotion to God.
Then he says something remarkable: "And I kept myself from my iniquity." What iniquity? Every man has a bespoke sin, a particular weakness that is his own special battle. For one man it is greed, for another lust, for another anger or envy. David, as a king, had the particular temptation to abuse his power, to act with arrogance and impunity, which is what happened in the matter of Uriah. But the fact that he fell into that sin does not negate the reality that he also fought against it. To keep oneself from one's iniquity means to be on guard, to know your weakness, and to set a watch over it. It is the fight that honors God, not just the victory. David is testifying that he has been in the fight. He has striven to mortify his own particular brand of sin.
The Greater David
As we read these words, we must feel their weight. We must examine ourselves and ask if we could say the same. But ultimately, we must recognize that David is singing about more than just himself. As the anointed king of Israel, he is a type, a foreshadowing, of the great Anointed One to come, the Lord Jesus Christ.
David could say these things with relative truth. He was righteous compared to Saul. His hands were clean compared to Absalom. He was blameless compared to his accusers. But there is One, and only one, who can sing this song with absolute and ultimate truth. Jesus Christ is the only man whose righteousness was perfect, whose hands were utterly clean, who kept the ways of Yahweh without deviation, whose life was perfectly blameless, and who kept Himself from all iniquity.
When God the Father looked at Jesus, He could say, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And because He was perfectly righteous, God has recompensed Him perfectly. He has rewarded Him by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His own right hand, giving Him a name that is above every name. The deliverance David celebrates is a shadow of the ultimate deliverance of the resurrection.
And here is the heart of the gospel. We cannot sing this song about ourselves in an ultimate sense. Our hands are not clean. We have wickedly departed from our God. But by faith, we are united to the One who can sing this song. His righteousness is imputed to us. His clean hands are counted as ours. His blamelessness covers our blame. This is our justification. God declares us righteous for Christ's sake alone.
But it does not end there. That imputed righteousness becomes an imparted power. The Spirit of the one who sang this song now dwells in us, enabling us to begin to sing it ourselves, albeit in a minor key. Because Christ's righteousness is ours, we are now empowered to walk in righteousness. Because His hands were clean, we are called to cleanse our hands. Because He was blameless, we are called to pursue blamelessness. God's reward for Christ's perfect righteousness was the resurrection and the throne. And God's rewards for our imperfect, Spirit-empowered righteousness are real blessings, real deliverances, and real fellowship with Him in this life, and a share in Christ's reward in the next. So let us flee from both pride and pretense, and by faith in Christ, let us pursue that clean-handed righteousness which God is pleased to see, and delighted to reward.