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Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.
The reason all things you could classify as good works are corrupt and abominable (Ps. 14:1) is that once you have made your works “good,” you believe in them. Your faith is then attached to the wrong thing. What is the solution to this malaise?
V. 2 The Lord was made to look down from heaven upon the children of man, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God.
God did not just look down by chance; he was forced, against his will, to look upon this “seed.” Once again, all men are one seed by synecdoche. There is a great contrast here: all men appear to be one thing in God’s sight and another in their own sight. That is why this Psalm of David is unlike Homer or Virgil––or the rest of mankind’s legends and religions––that look down upon men in search of heroes. God sees the Bar-Adam, the children of Adam. But we remember that even with this name, which Christ will use for himself, we are speaking of all men outside of Christ and of what happens when the Second Adam, does in fact come.
The transitive verb here (“The Lord made to look down”) means that not only did the Lord look down himself, but he is likewise making all of us see exactly what he saw. We are seeing ourselves through God’s eyes, not our own. Again, the spectacle we see is absolute: None understand! None seek! Think of the ramifications of this vision of God. Men have even turned seeking God into their own work. But what God is looking for is someone—anyone—understanding him or seeking him in true affection of the heart. That true affection fulfills the first commandment when it seeks nothing of one’s own, but in all things seeks only the glory of God. But such a faith is not a work or deed. Faith is that feature of a man that has nothing to do with free will. Paul uses this Psalm at the crucial point in his letter to the Romans (3:9-12) to prove the same thing David did: that “None is righteous, no not one,” and that everything that is not faith is sin. Only with this awareness do we follow both David and Paul in saying that seeking God refers to no active power in us. Instead, faith is an affection responding in the heart to God’s unexpected act of forgiveness.
V. 3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no not one.
This verse is controlled by God, using the abundance of Hebrew adverbs to make the absolute argument of human sin: “all,” “together,” and “not one.” All men together are corrupt. In a single blow, God rules out the whole Pharisaic tradition among Jews and the monastic tradition among Christians. Those groups separate themselves from sinners––which is likely the meaning of the word Pharisee––and present themselves as exceptions to the rule of sin. But God won’t let them get away with this farce. “Turned” or “gone aside” refers to the universal sin that tries to make itself holy over and against most sinners. But this is nothing less than defection from faith, or apostasy from faith. Paul especially uses this defection as the great sign of the end times in 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy 4:1-3. Instead of fulfilling the first commandment, they ruin all the commandments, leaving their efforts “unprofitable” or “corrupt.” Isaiah 59:6 uses the same wording for “works of iniquity” that bring in the final judgment. Finally, “not one does good” refers not only to sins of commission but also to sins of omission, and is sealed by the universal negative, which again describes the absoluteness of sin.
David stands in opposition to Aristotle, who is infamous not only for his theory of overcoming sin by habit, but also for his theory that in all doctrines one is not to be absolute, but always to seek the mean between extremes. Rather than saying that everyone is a sinner through and through, as David does, Aristotle always creeps back into Christian teaching by saying that no truth can be absolute, so that if a man is a sinner, he must still preserve some vestige of righteousness from which he can establish a basis on which a sinner can be turned into a saint. But Paul doesn’t buy that theory: “Being abominable and disobedient and to every good work—reprobate” (Titus 1:16). For David and Paul, there is no mean between extremes for a sinner—“none is good, no not one.”
V. 4 Will they not know? All the workers of iniquity who devour my people as the food of bread? They call not upon the Lord.
“Will they not know” is, of course, put absolutely again, asking: “will there never be a change or an insight of knowledge?” Is there no path for the sinner to holiness? No. Is there no chance to exercise and practice like an Olympic athlete, then turn good works into habits, and habits into a new being who is finally just? The answer is no, and the reason is not only within the sinner, who has no good left to work with. The plight of the sinner is that he is not only a sinner himself, but is also surrounded by “workers of iniquity” who devour people rather than improve them. They are spiritual and physical tyrants with insatiable avarice, whether they wear the toga of a Roman senator or the robe of a bishop.
What a sinner needs is a preacher; but what he gets instead is a sea of tyrants trying to consume him while serving their own bellies. They have a fierce covetousness. And covetousness isn’t just condemned in the final two commandments, but is that which consumes the sinner once he realizes he will never be made righteous by works. These tyrants and workers of iniquity want to keep God’s people from hearing God’s word––and only God’s word. In place of God’s forgiveness, they teach the law as if it were God’s way of justifying the sinner, with the result being that no one calls upon the name of the Lord.
V. 5 There they feared with fear where no fear was, for the Lord is in the generation of the righteous.
This old translation adds “where no fear was.” The Hebrew uses the typical Jewish idiom, “feared with great fear.” In either case, it is an idiom that paints a picture for us of what is in the conscience of the ungodly, covetous tyrant. When they remove the gospel from their own citizens or church members, it is only because it has already been removed from their own consciences. The effect is always the same: such devourers of God’s people live in abject fear because they have put their own word where God’s promise belongs. They demand impossible deeds from others while knowing that the noose hangs around their necks. As Luther noted, this fear is especially prominent in the church, where there are piles of people with such “harassed consciences” who bear the terrible burden of a constant, scrupulous mind. They cannot take rest, because the law tells them all that they must do and, at the same time, that they haven't done it. Meanwhile, these harassed consciences live in constant fear of how God will judge them in the end. The “Lord is in the generation of the righteous.” He is not asking you to seek or find him. He is already there, in that generation of the righteous, his new kingdom, where all consciences have faith! Faith has absolutely no scruples.
V. 6 You have confounded the counsel of the poor [justified] because the Lord is his refuge.
David’s Psalm now turns the law against these gluttonous, scrupulous, harassed consciences to tell them, “You have confounded the counsel of the poor.” They laugh at the “counsel of the poor.” And who are these poor? Not poor financially––or in the habits of virtue and morality––but those who have no justification of their own, but only God’s simple absolution. While these poor justified are being ridiculed, they are the ones who actually have refuge in God. They don’t depend on the words pumped into their ears by others, and they do not listen to themselves. They have a free, workless refuge in God’s promise of forgiveness to which their faith clings.
V. 7 Who will give the salvation of Israel out of Zion? When the Lord turns back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.
Who is left to give salvation when all the world is absolutely sinful? David wonders how this will work. Since sin is total, how is there any way out for sinners? David asks, “Who will give the salvation?” The long history of Christian interpretation of this verse holds that it concerns the much-delayed conversion of Jews because of the reference to Zion. Zion, of course, is David’s great hill where the temple would be built, with the means God provided to atone for sins. Yet salvation is a person, and that person is Christ––intent on getting his word to the whole world, starting with Israel. David’s meaning here is that no man can do this by himself, since there is only sin. Hence, the “who” refers to God, who alone can overcome the captivity of his people by taking captivity captive (Ps 68:18). “Out of Zion,” then, means that salvation is by the preaching that comes from Christ alone; no Christian is ever made holy by his obedience to God’s law, as if he had done God a service that merited salvation. Thus, no one gives salvation but God alone, and he does it through his two words of law and gospel.
It is not so mundane as to say that God “restores the fortunes of his people,” but David uses the key word Shebut, which also describes Christ’s ascension in Psalm 68. Here it means that salvation is God in Christ coming to take captivity captive. How can the captivity in Egypt or in Babylon ever be accounted for? Not by giving back lost jewels, but by overturning the captivity of his own people. When Christ saves by taking captivity captive, it means that you will never be made righteous by obedience, since only the Lord gives salvation. He alone can preach in a world where everyone is totally corrupt. None is righteous, not one! They are all without faith. How will they ever get faith—since their wills and consciences have been taken captive by the dream that the law provides a way out of their corruption? Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive; so, Jacob rejoices that when God promises forgiveness, he not only can forgive but has already done so. No work gives faith, but faith does many works after the fact.
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