Bird's-eye view
In this section of his morning prayer, David moves from his personal cry for audience with God to a profound declaration of God's character. This is the essential foundation for any true prayer. We do not appeal to a sentimental deity who is indulgent toward sin, but to a holy King who is utterly and constitutionally opposed to all evil. David establishes a stark, black-and-white contrast between the nature of God and the nature of the wicked. God does not delight in wickedness, evil cannot be His houseguest, the arrogant cannot stand in His presence, and He actively hates those who work iniquity. This is not a description of a distant, abstract quality, but of God's personal, active, and holy revulsion to sin and to unrepentant sinners. The passage concludes by showing that this hatred is not just an internal disposition; it results in definitive action. God destroys liars and abhors the violent and deceitful. This is the bedrock of the gospel: because God is this holy, a real atonement was necessary. The cross is not God's way of setting aside His hatred of sin, but rather the ultimate expression of it.
These verses are a potent antidote to the modern, syrupy conceptions of God that have so infected the church. David, a man after God's own heart, understood that God's love and God's hatred are not contradictory but are two sides of the same holy coin. Because He loves righteousness with a perfect love, He must hate iniquity with a perfect hatred. This understanding fuels the psalmist's plea for salvation and judgment, grounding it not in his own merit, but in the very character of the God to whom he prays.
Outline
- 1. The Holy Character of God (Ps 5:4-6)
- a. God's Constitutional Opposition to Evil (Ps 5:4)
- b. God's Personal Hatred of the Wicked (Ps 5:5)
- c. God's Active Judgment on Sinners (Ps 5:6)
Context In Psalms
Psalm 5 is a morning prayer, a lament that begins with an individual's plea for God to hear him (vv. 1-3). The psalmist, David, is beset by enemies, whom he describes later as flatterers with destruction in their hearts (v. 9). Before he details his request for deliverance and their judgment (vv. 7-12), he first establishes the theological foundation for his appeal in verses 4-6. His confidence that God will hear him and act is not based on wishful thinking, but on the revealed nature of God. Because God is holy and hates evil, David can confidently expect Him to distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. This section, therefore, is the hinge of the psalm. It connects David's personal devotion ("in the morning I will order my prayer to You") with his corporate and covenantal expectations of justice ("lead me in Your righteousness because of my enemies"). The stark description of God's holiness here sets the stage for the equally stark division between the ultimate fates of the righteous and the wicked at the psalm's conclusion.
Key Issues
- The Holiness of God
- God's Hatred of Sin and Sinners
- The Distinction Between God's Love and Sentimentalism
- The Relationship Between Divine Character and Divine Action
- The Foundation for Imprecatory Prayer
The Unaccommodating God
We live in a squishy age, an age that wants a God who is, above all else, accommodating. We want a God who is a celestial therapist, nodding understandingly at our follies and assuring us that our intentions were good. We want a God who "hates the sin but loves the sinner" in a way that neuters His wrath and makes sin out to be little more than an unfortunate blunder, easily separable from the person who commits it. David's God is not this God. The God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is utterly unaccommodating to evil. He is a consuming fire. His holiness is not a mood; it is the very fabric of His being. And because He is holy, His presence is lethal to unholiness.
This passage forces us to confront a difficult but essential truth: God's hatred is real. It is not an embarrassing Old Testament attribute that Jesus came to smooth over. It is the necessary corollary of His love. A God who did not hate wickedness would be a God who did not truly love righteousness. He would be morally tepid, an indifferent spectator. But our God is a king, a judge, and a father. He loves His own and He hates His enemies. The central message of the gospel is not that God decided to stop hating sin, but that He found a way to save sinners from the full and righteous expression of that hatred, which is precisely what the cross was.
Verse by Verse Commentary
4 For You are not a God who delights in wickedness; Evil does not sojourn with You.
David begins with a foundational negative. Before he says what God is, he says what God is not. God takes no delight in wickedness. The word implies pleasure, a finding of satisfaction. To God, wickedness is not just a mistake or a flaw; it is repulsive. It is contrary to His very nature. The second clause intensifies the first. Not only does God not delight in evil, but evil cannot even be a temporary guest in His presence. The word sojourn means to dwell as a foreigner or a guest. Evil cannot find lodging with God, not even for a night. There is no corner of God's character, no shadow in His being, where evil can find a place to rest. This establishes the absolute moral gulf between the Creator and the rebellious creature. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. This is the starting point for all true theology.
5 The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all workers of iniquity.
Here the abstract principle of verse 4 is applied to specific people. It is not just "evil" as a concept that is excluded, but evil men. The boastful, the arrogant who live as though they are the center of the universe, cannot stand in God's sight. To "stand before" a king is to be an approved servant in his court. The arrogant are summarily dismissed; they have no place in the divine council. Then comes the hammer blow, the statement that makes modern Christians blush and stammer. "You hate all workers of iniquity." Notice, it does not say that God hates the iniquity that the workers do. It says He hates the workers themselves. This is not a slip of the pen. The Bible is clear on this point. At the Day of Judgment, God does not cast sins into hell; He casts sinners into hell. God's wrath is personal because sin is personal. Of course, the only place where God has made it possible to separate the sin from the sinner is at the cross of Jesus Christ. There, our sins were taken from us and placed upon another, so that God's perfect hatred for sin could be poured out on His Son, allowing His perfect love to be poured out on us.
6 You destroy those who speak falsehood; Yahweh abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.
God's hatred is not a passive emotion. It leads to action. He destroys those who speak falsehood. The lie is the native tongue of the devil, and God's judgment upon it is total. This is not just about little white lies; it refers to a life characterized by falsehood, a rejection of the God who is Truth. The second clause is a parallelism that specifies the kind of people God finds particularly repulsive. Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit. To abhor is to loathe, to find utterly detestable. And who is this man? He is the one whose life is marked by violence and treachery. He is Cain. He is the man who uses his strength to destroy and his words to manipulate. David, who was constantly hounded by such men, takes comfort in this. His enemies are not just his enemies; they are God's enemies. And the God who abhors them will not be mocked. He will act. This holy abhorrence is the ground of our salvation, for it was this abhorrence of our sin that Christ bore on our behalf.
Application
The first and most crucial application is to get our doctrine of God right. If our God is a cosmic teddy bear, then the cross is a piece of cosmic child abuse. But if God is the holy being described in this psalm, a God who hates workers of iniquity and destroys liars, then the cross is the most glorious display of love and justice imaginable. We must see that God's hatred for our sin was so fierce that nothing less than the death of His own Son could satisfy it. This should lead us not to fear, but to worship. We who were by nature "workers of iniquity" are now, in Christ, beloved children. God's hatred for sin was not compromised; it was satisfied.
Second, this passage should shape our prayers. Like David, we should pray with confidence, knowing that God is on the side of righteousness. We should not be timid in asking God to act against the proud, the violent, and the deceitful who plague our world. This is not a petty desire for personal revenge, but a righteous longing to see God's character vindicated in the world. We are asking God to be God.
Finally, this gives us a deep hatred for our own sin. We cannot read that God abhors the man of deceit and then be casual about the falsehoods on our own lips. We cannot see that evil cannot sojourn with Him and then seek to make a comfortable home for it in our hearts. We are called to be holy because the God we worship is holy. The gospel does not make us comfortable with sin; it makes us hate it with a holy hatred, because we see what it cost our Savior. We were the boastful, the liars, the workers of iniquity. But God, in His love, sent His Son to bear His hatred, so that we might be brought into His presence, where we now stand, not by our merit, but by His grace alone.