Psalms 119

Good dealing according to the word is confessed. Wesleyan Arminians hear gratitude for promise-kept kindness—experience confirming that God does not tease his servants with empty speech.

Shared praise: benefits flow along the channel of the word. Thanksgiving fits the servant who has tasted faithfulness.

Calvin: he celebrates God’s faithfulness in performing the grace promised—not a vague “all is for the best,” but experienced truthfulness. Free goodness induces God to deal bountifully, yet we hope for nothing until he binds himself by his word.

Well-dealt and according to the word stand together. Promises are the conduit of benefits from the fountain of free goodness.

Wesley: Judgment—Whereby I may rightly discern between truth and falsehood. Knowledge—A spiritual experimental knowledge.

The accent falls on faith that already embraces the commandments asking for discernment and experimental knowledge—docility that wants to grow. Belief is reason to request more light, not a claim to need none.

Calvin: after experiencing God’s faithfulness, he asks to grow in right understanding—taste and knowledge together, sound discretion. He believed the commandments—cheerfully embraced the law—yet that holy zeal made him desire conformity and fear going astray; he pleads for another gift: sound taste and good understanding. Right affection and good understanding are both indispensable; after God frames the heart to obedience, we must ask wisdom to regulate our zeal.

Believing is not the end of need. Spirit-wrought docility asks further illuminating grace.

Affliction checked wandering and restored keeping. Arminians hear fatherly discipline that recovers those who stray—correction unto obedience, not cruelty for its own sake.

“Now I observe” is confession of mercy in the rod. Shared pastoral wisdom: pain can be a tutor back to the word.

Calvin: in his own person he describes the wantonness common to all—we never yield obedience until compelled by chastisements; so long as God deals gently, we break into insolence. Even a prophet required forcible means. The flesh is obstreperous; God applies appropriate remedies—poverty, shame, disease, distress, labor—according to our vices. The fruit of chastisement should assuage its bitterness.

Affliction is God’s compulsory schooling of hard hearts. Wandering yields when the rod teaches; gentleness alone often leaves us insolent.

God’s goodness and good-doing ground the plea to be taught. Arminians hear character and action together—the Good One asked to teach statutes, not merely to increase comforts.

Shared aim: progress in the law as the kindness most desired.

Calvin: nearly the same as the close of the prior octave—he beseeches God to exercise goodness not by riches, honors, or pleasures, but by enabling progress in knowing the law. The world asks bounty for fleshly desires; David would be satisfied if God were liberal in this one particular most men disdain.

Teach me is the shape goodness takes for the servant. Statute-learning outranks worldly “good dealing.”

Wholeheart keeping continues under smears. The emphasis is on integrity that will not trade the precepts for a repaired reputation among liars.

Shared fortitude: calumny is no excuse to loosen the heart’s grip on the word.

Calvin: though the wicked put a malignant twist on all he did to turn him from uprightness, his mind remained unaltered. It is severe to be loaded with infamy while innocent; many good people shake when so rewarded. He continues observing the law; the proud—great men inflated with honors—trample as if he were a dead dog. Leave children of the world their reward; our crown is in heaven.

Whole-heart precept-keeping under woven lies is invincible constancy. Cast eyes to the heavenly stage.

Wesley: Fat—They are stupid and insensible.

Wesley’s heirs hear contrast: callous hearts versus delight in the law. Insensibility is refused; pleasure in Scripture is cultivated under grace.

Calvin: their heart is fat as grease—a vice common among despisers; grossness overgrows the heart so they are stupefied and even frenzied in obstinacy. Wonderful is the prophet’s magnanimity who found all delight in the law—as food that refreshed him—which could not be were the heart not cleansed from unhallowed pleasures.

Fat insensibility and law-delight are opposed. Delight marks a heart freed for the word’s sweetness.

Affliction called good because it taught the statutes. One hears willing after-the-fact praise of the tutor—learning valued above ease.

Shared confession: the end of the rod is schooling in God’s word. Taste that fruit to sweeten correction.

Calvin: confirms that it was profitable to be subdued by chastisements and brought to obedience. He confesses he was not exempt from the perverse obstinacy infecting all; otherwise the profit would be pretended. None willingly submits until God softens hardness with the hammer. Taste continually the fruit of corrections that they become sweet.

“good for me” is learned theology of the rod. Affliction’s aim is statute-learning through mortified flesh.

The law outvalues vast wealth. Classical Arminians hear reordered treasure—Scripture better than thousands of coins.

Shared verdict against the world’s immoderate desire of riches. Prefer the mouth of God to the market’s pile.

Calvin: he preferred God’s law to all the world’s riches, whose immoderate desire infatuates most. He does not compare with riches he owned; he affirms the law more precious than a vast inheritance.

Law-as-better-than-gold is settled valuation. Desire is catechized away from infatuation toward the word.