Psalm 69 Versus the Free Offer and Common Grace

Rev. Angus Stewart

I. Scripture

Psalm 69
²²Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.
²³Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake.
²⁴Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them.
²⁵Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.
²⁶For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded.
²⁷Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness.
²⁸Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.

II. Article

In the very first sentence of his article, “The Free Offer of the Gospel,” John Murray succinctly identifies the key issue in the debate: “It would appear that the real point in dispute in connection with the Free Offer of the gospel is whether it can properly be said that God desires the salvation of all men” (Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 4, p. 113; italics Murray’s).

For Murray, “all men” here encompasses the elect and the reprobate, those whom “God was pleased … to pass by, and to ordain … to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice” (Westminster Confession 3:7).

“Salvation” surely includes unconditional election in Christ, redemption by His blood, union with Him, the gift of the Holy Spirit, regeneration, calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, preservation, glorification, etc.—blessings given only to the elect (Rom. 8:29-30; Eph. 1:3-14).

John Murray rightly argues that, if God desires to give the reprobate the end (salvation and its blessings), He must also desire to give them the means or ways to that end, namely repentance and faith: “It amounts to the same things to say ‘God desires their salvation’ as to say ‘He desires their repentance’” (p. 114).

Thus the question, “Does the God desire to save the reprobate?” means “Does God desire to elect, redeem and unite the reprobate to Christ, and to pour out His Spirit upon them, and to regenerate, call, justify, adopt, sanctify, preserve and glorify them? Does He desire to give the reprobate faith and repentance?” What saith the Scriptures?

John 19:28-30 (and the parallel passages in the other three gospel accounts) proves that Jesus Christ is speaking in Psalm 69:21: “They gave me vinegar to drink.” In the next seven verses (vv. 22-28), Christ proceeds to intercede against the reprobate or non-elect (vv. 24, 28). He prays, “Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not” (v. 23)—illumination or knowledge is part of faith (Eph. 3:17-19). “Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness” (Ps. 69:27)—righteousness is God’s gift in justification. He prays to the Most High for their everlasting ruin: “Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them” (v. 24). So far is the Lord Jesus from desiring the salvation of the reprobate that He entreats His heavenly Father that they not be given faith (v. 23), that they not be forgiven or justified (v. 27), that they “not be written with the righteous” (v. 28), and that they be not glorified but damned for their sins (v. 24).

What about the false doctrine that the good things that God gives the reprobate in this life come out of a common or universal grace or love for them? Here we quote Christ’s imprecations regarding their tables and the food they carry (v. 22), and their homes (v. 25):

Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap (v. 22).

Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents (v. 25).

Remember, these prayers, which oppose the errors of the free or well-meant offer and common grace, are placed upon our Saviour’s lips as He hung upon the cross, when “they gave him vinegar to drink” (v. 21)!

Some who hold to the free offer agree that Psalm 69 presents Christ’s will that the enemies of the Messiah be destroyed. Thus they believe that God desires to condemn the reprobate and He also desires to save them (but does not).

Yet Job says of God “what his soul desireth, even that he doeth” (23:13). If “a double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8), what about a double-minded god who desires two contradictory things? Advocates of the free offer respond that the (alleged) “two ‘wills’ in God” are at two “levels.” But God has only one will and there are no “levels” in Him, for He is one and in no respect two (Deut. 6:4).

Those who believe that God desires to save the reprobate argue from Jesus’ prayer in Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” But did this include the reprobate? Some of Christ’s oppressors had sinned against the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:31-32). Our Lord could not have prayed for them, according to I John 5:16. Earlier Christ had declared, “Father … thou hearest me always” (John 11:41-42). Did God, who always heard Christ, fail to answer His prayer of Luke 23:34, even in part? Moreover, Jesus said just hours before the cross, “I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me” (John 17:9). Christ’s intercession, like His atonement upon which it is based, is always particular and efficacious (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). His prayer of Luke 23:34 was answered in the salvation of the penitent thief and thousands in Jerusalem (Acts 2:41; 4:4).

The Christ of God loves, desires to save, died for and saves His elect church (Eph. 5:25), and wills the destruction of the reprobate wicked (Ps. 69:22-28). This biblical Jesus must be preached, and all must urgently be exhorted to repent and believe in Him.

III. Quotes

William S. Plumer on Psalm 69: “[Psalm 69] is very decidedly Messianic. The only question is, whether it is directly and fully prophetic or typical-Messianic. There is no valid objection to the admission that in some parts David, as a sufferer, speaks as a type of Christ, and that in others he rises to the height of unqualified prediction respecting Messiah. Verse 4 is cited in John 15:25; v. 9, in John 2:17; Romans 15:3; v. 21, in Matthew 27:34, 48; Mark 15:23; John 19:28, 29; vv. 22, 23, in Romans 11:9, 10; and v. 25, in Acts 1:16, 20. Sound commentators generally admit that it has its fulfilment in Christ. Theodoret: ‘It is a prediction of the sufferings of Christ, and the final destruction of the Jews on that account.’ Calvin: ‘David wrote this inspired ode, not so much in his own name, as in the name of the whole church of whose head he was an eminent type.’ Vitringa: ‘It is admitted among Christians, that in the sixty-ninth Psalm Christ, and Christ as a sufferer, is to be placed before our eyes. We add, that it refers to Christ crucified as the Evangelists Matthew, Mark and John apply it.’ Fabritius: ‘In this Psalm David is a figure of Christ.’ Alexander: ‘The only individual in whom the traits meet is Christ.’ Hodge: ‘This Psalm is so frequently quoted and applied to Christ in the New Testament, that it must be considered as directly prophetical.’ Similar remarks might be cited from Gill, Anderson, Scott and others. Calvin’s first remark on this Psalm is: ‘There is a close resemblance between this and the twenty-second Psalm.’ Many others have observed the likeness. This is a composition of great beauty and poetic excellence” (Psalms, p. 675).

Franz Delitzsch on Psalm 69: “The whole [69th] Psalm is typically prophetic, in as far as it is a declaration of a history of life and suffering moulded by God into a factual prediction concerning Jesus the Christ, whether it be the story of a king or prophet; and in as far as the Spirit of prophecy has even moulded the declaration itself into the language of prophecy concerning the future One.”

J. A. Alexander on Psalm 69: “There is no psalm, except the twenty-second, more distinctly applied to him [i.e., Christ] in the New Testament [than Psalm 69]” (The Psalms Translated and Explained, p. 292).

John Phillips on Psalm 69: “No doubt the Lord quoted all of Psalm 22 and all of Psalm 69 when hanging on the cross. These closing verses [cf. vv. 29-36] must have greatly encouraged Him and strengthened Him to keep His grip on reality in the face of sufferings which stagger the imagination and which are far beyond our ability to conceive” (Exploring the Psalms, vol. 1: Psalms 1-88, p. 570).

James E. Adams on the imprecatory psalms : “Christ Is Praying These Psalms. Hearing Christ speak in the Psalms gives us the key to these strongly worded curses, and we as people of the Book need this understanding in order to correctly handle the word of truth. One commentator reminds us:

The circumstance that these Psalms are so unequivocally endorsed and appropriated by our blessed Lord … will constrain disciples of Christ to touch them with a reverent hand, and rather to distrust their own judgment, than to brand such Scriptures as the products of an unsanctified and unchristian temper.

From our pulpits we who are pastors must firmly maintain that it is only right for the righteous King of Peace to ask God to destroy His enemies. in doing so He affirms the supremacy of God who puts ‘all enemies under his feet.’ What a difference it makes in our preaching when we know that these psalms are not the emotional prayers of angry men, but the very war cries of our Prince of Peace! The Lord Jesus Christ is praying these prayers of vengeance. The prayers that cry out for the utter destruction of the psalmist’s enemies can only be grasped when heard from the loving lips of our Lord Jesus. These prayers signal an alarm to all who are still enemies of King Jesus. His prayers will be answered! God’s wrath is revealed upon all who oppose Christ. Anyone who rejects God’s way of forgiveness in the cross of Christ will bear the dreadful curses of God. He who prays:

May the table set before them become a snare; may it become retribution and a trap. May their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever. Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them. May their place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in their tents. For they persecute those you wound and talk about the pain of those you hurt. Charge them with crime upon crime; do not let them share in your salvation. May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous (Ps. 69:22-28),

will one day make this prayer a reality when He says to those on His left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matt. 25:41)” (War Psalms of the Prince of Peace: Lessons From the Imprecatory Psalms [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1991], pp. 33-34; emphases Adams’).

William S. Plumer on Psalm 69:22: “This verse is clearly connected with the next three, so that the right use of one being ascertained, we know the application of the others. Christ applied to his scornful countrymen the twenty-fifth verse, and this goes with it. Paul makes the same application of this verse and the next, Rom. 11:9, 10; so that we have the key to the right exposition.”

John Calvin on Psalm 69:22: “These expressions are metaphorical, and they imply a desire that whatever things had been allotted to them in providence for the preservation of life, and for their welfare and convenience, might be turned by God into the occasion or instrument of their destruction. From this we gather that as things which naturally and of themselves are hurtful, become the means of furthering our welfare when we are in favour with God; so, when his anger is kindled against us, all those things which have a native tendency to produce our happiness are cursed, and become so many causes of our destruction. It is an instance of the Divine justice, which ought deeply to impress our minds with awe, when the Holy Spirit declares that all the means of preserving life are deadly to the reprobate (Titus 1:15) so that the very sun, which carries healing under his wings (Malachi 4:2) breathes only a deadly exhalation for them.”

John Calvin on Genesis 50:20: “… with perfect rectitude and justice, he [i.e., God] turns the food of reprobates into poison, their light into darkness, their table into a snare [Ps. 69:22], and, in short, their life into death. If human minds cannot reach these depths, let them rather suppliantly adore the mysteries they do not comprehend, than, as vessels of clay, proudly exalt themselves against their Maker [cf. Rom. 9:20-21].”

Matthew Poole on Psalm 69:23: “Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not … Their eyes; not the eyes of their bodies (for so this was not accomplished in David’s nor in Christ’s enemies) but of their minds, that they may not discern God’s truth, nor their own duty, nor the way of peace and salvation. Punish them in their own kind; as they shut their eyes and would not see, so do thou judicially blind them. This was threatened and inflicted upon the Jews, Isaiah 6:10; John 12:39, 40.”

William S. Plumer on Psalm 69:25: “Let their habitation be desolate. This clause is quoted by Christ in his lament over Jerusalem, and applied to the Jewish nation, showing its prophetical character, Matt. 23:37, 28. It is also quoted by Peter and applied to Judas Iscariot, Acts 1:16-20.”

John Gill on Psalm 69:26: “For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten … Meaning the Messiah, who was not only smitten and scourged by men, but was stricken and smitten of God; according to his determinate counsel and foreknowledge, and agreeably to his will and pleasure; with the rod of his justice for the satisfaction of it; for the sins of his people, whose surety he was. Him the Jews followed with reproaches and calumnies; pursued after his life, and persecuted him unto death; and which was the cause of their ruin and destruction; see 1 Thess. 2:15; And they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded; or, of thy wounded ones; not wounded by him, but wounded for his sake, on his account, and for their profession of faith in his son Jesus Christ. These, as they were led to the slaughter, had trial of cruel mockings, which aggravated their sufferings, and were very grieving to them; especially such talk as reflected upon their dear Redeemer, for whose sake they were put to death.”

Matthew Poole on Psalm 69:27: “Of thy righteousness, properly so called, of that everlasting righteousness which the Messiah shall bring into the world, Daniel 9:24, which is called the righteousness of God, Romans 1:17 Philippians 3:9, &c., which is said to be witnessed by the law and the prophets, Romans 3:21, by and for which God doth justify or pardon sinners, and accept them in Christ as righteous persons. For this was the righteousness which the Jews rejected to their own ruin, Romans 10:3, according to this prediction. Thus as the first branch of the verse maketh or supposeth them guilty of many sins, so this excludes them from the only remedy, the remission of their sins. And that justifying rather than sanctifying righteousness is here meant seems most probable from the phrase, which seems to be a judicial phrase, as we read of coming or entering into judgment, Job 22:4 34:23, and into condemnation, John 5:24, opposite unto which is this phrase, of coming into justification; or, which is all one, into thy righteousness.”

J. A. Alexander on Psalm 69:27: “The righteousness of God is that which he bestows by the judicial act of justification, including pardon. To come into it is to come into possession or enjoyment of it, to become a sharer in it.”

Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalm 69:28: “‘And not be written with the righteous.’ This clause is parallel with the former, and shows that the inner meaning of being blotted out from the book of life is to have it made evident that the name was never written there at all. Man in his imperfect copy of God’s book of life will have to make many emendations, both of insertion and erasure; but, as before the Lord, the record is for ever fixed and unalterable.”

John Calvin on Psalm 69:28: “As then David desires that the vengeance of God may be manifested, he very properly speaks of the reprobation of his enemies in language accommodated to our understanding; as if he had said, O God! reckon them not among the number or ranks of thy people, and let them not be gathered together with thy Church; but rather show by destroying them that thou has rejected them; and although they occupy a place for a time among thy faithful ones, do thou at length cut them off, to make it manifest that they were aliens, though they were mingled with the members of thy family.”