John Calvin Commentary Psalms 51:10

"Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me." — Psalms 51:10 (ASV)

Create in me a clean heart, O God! In the previous part of the psalm, David has been praying for pardon. He now requests that the grace of the Spirit, which he had forfeited, or deserved to have forfeited, might be restored to him. The two requests are quite distinct, though sometimes confused, even by learned men.

He passes from the subject of the gratuitous remission of sin to that of sanctification. He was naturally led to this with earnest anxiety by the consciousness of his having merited the loss of all the gifts of the Spirit, and of his having actually, to a great extent, lost them. By employing the term create, he expresses his conviction that nothing less than a miracle could bring about his reformation, and emphatically declares that repentance is the gift of God. The Sophists grant the necessity of the Spirit's help and allow that assisting grace must both precede and follow; but by assigning a middle place to human free will, they rob God of a great part of his glory. David, by the word he uses here, describes God's work in renewing the heart in a manner suitable to its extraordinary nature, representing it as the formation of a new creature.

As he had already been endowed with the Spirit, he prays in the latter part of the verse that God would renew a right spirit within him. But by the term create, which he had previously used, he acknowledges that we are indebted entirely to the grace of God, both for our first regeneration and, in the event of our falling, for subsequent restoration. He does not merely assert that his heart and spirit were weak, requiring divine assistance, but that they must remain destitute of all purity and rectitude until these are communicated from above. By this it appears that our nature is entirely corrupt, for if it possessed any rectitude or purity, David would not, as in this verse, have called the one a gift of the Spirit, and the other a creation.

In the following verse, he presents the same petition in language that implies the connection of pardon with the enjoyment of the Holy Spirit's leading. If God freely reconciles us to himself, it follows that he will guide us by the Spirit of adoption. It is only those whom he loves, and has numbered among his own children, that he blesses with a share of his Spirit; and David shows that he was aware of this when he prays for the continuance of the grace of adoption as indispensable to the continued possession of the Spirit.

The words of this verse imply that the Spirit had not been entirely taken away from him, however much his gifts had been temporarily obscured. Indeed, it is evident that David could not be altogether divested of his former excellencies, for he seems to have discharged his duties as a king honorably, to have conscientiously observed the ordinances of religion, and to have regulated his conduct by the divine law.

On one point he had fallen into a deadly lethargy, but he was not given over to a reprobate mind; and it is scarcely conceivable that the rebuke of Nathan the prophet should have worked so easily and so suddenly in arousing him, had there been no latent spark of godliness still remaining in his soul.

He prays, it is true, that his spirit may be renewed, but this must be understood with a limitation. The truth we are now emphasizing is an important one, as many learned men have been carelessly drawn into the opinion that the elect, by falling into mortal sin, may lose the Spirit altogether and be alienated from God.

The contrary is clearly declared by Peter, who tells us that the word by which we are born again is an incorruptible seed (1 Peter 1:23), and John is equally explicit in informing us that the elect are preserved from falling away altogether (1 John 3:9). However much they may appear for a time to have been cast off by God, it is afterwards seen that grace must have been alive in their hearts, even during that interval when it seemed to be extinguished.

Nor is there any force in the objection that David speaks as if he feared that he might be deprived of the Spirit. It is natural that the saints, when they have fallen into sin and have thus done what they could to expel the grace of God, should feel anxiety on this point. However, it is their duty to hold fast to the truth that grace is the incorruptible seed of God, which can never perish in any heart where it has been deposited.

This is the spirit David displayed. Reflecting on his offense, he is agitated with fears, and yet rests in the conviction that, being a child of God, he would not be deprived of what he had indeed justly forfeited.