John Calvin Commentary Psalms 119:159

"Consider how I love thy precepts: Quicken me, O Jehovah, according to thy lovingkindness." — Psalms 119:159 (ASV)

Behold, O Jehovah, how I have loved your commandments. What I have stated before must be remembered—that when the saints speak of their own piety before God, they are not accused of presenting their own merits as the basis of their confidence. Instead, they regard this as a settled principle: God, who distinguishes His servants from the profane and wicked, will be merciful to them because they seek Him with their whole heart.

Besides, a sincere love of God’s law is an undoubted evidence of adoption, since this love is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Prophet, therefore, although he claims nothing for himself, very properly brings forward his own piety for the purpose of encouraging himself to hold a more assured hope of obtaining his request, through the grace of God which he had experienced.

At the same time, we are taught that there can be no true keeping of the law except what springs from free and spontaneous love. God demands voluntary sacrifices, and the beginning of a good life is to love Him, as Moses declares (Deuteronomy 10:12):

And now, O Israel! What does the Lord require of you,
but to love Him.

The same thing is also repeated in the summary of the law (Deuteronomy 6:5): You shall love the Lord your God. For this reason, David has previously stated that the law of God was not only precious but also delightful to him.

Now, as in keeping the law, it is necessary for us to begin with voluntary obedience, so that nothing may delight us more than the righteousness of God. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that a sense of the free goodness of God and of His fatherly love is indispensably necessary for our hearts to be inclined to this affection.

So far are the bare commandments from winning men to obey them, that they rather frighten them away. Hence it is evident that it is only when a man has tasted the goodness of God from the teaching of the law, that he applies his heart to love it in return.

The frequency with which the Prophet repeats the prayer, that God would quicken him, teaches us that he knew well the frailty of his own life, so that in his estimation, men live only insofar as God every moment breathes life into them. Besides, it is probable that he had been continually besieged by many deaths, so that he might more earnestly turn to the fountain of life.

He again rests his faith upon the goodness of God as its foundation—quicken me according to your loving-kindness—from which we perceive how far he was from boasting of his own merits when he protested in the preceding sentence that he loved God’s law.