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I. A REMARKABLE OUTLINE OF A HOLY CHARACTER. He possessed the Holy Spirit, or he could not have prayed that that Spirit might not be taken from him. God had departed from Saul, because Saul had refused His counsel and departed from Him; and Saul's successor, trembling as he remembers the fate of the founder of the monarchy, and of his vanished dynasty, prays with peculiar emphasis of meaning, "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." "A right spirit" — "a constant or firm spirit" is the meaning. Then consider the third element in the character which David longs to possess — a "free" spirit. He who is holy because full of God's Spirit, and constant in his holiness, will likewise be free. That is the same word which is in other places translated "willing" — and the scope of the psalmist's desire is, "Let my spirit be emancipated from sin by willing obedience." This goes very deep into the heart of all true godliness. And so the psalmist prays, "Let my obedience be so willing that I had rather do what Thou wilt than anything besides."

II. DESIRES FOR HOLINESS SHOULD BECOME PRAYERS. David does not merely long for certain spiritual excellences; he goes to God for them. There are some of you that are wasting your lives in paroxysms of fierce struggle with the evil that you have partially discovered in yourselves, alternating with long languor fits of collapse and apathy, and who make no solid advance, just because you will not lay to heart these two convictions — your sin has to do with God, and your sins come from a sinful nature. Because of the one fact, you must go to God for pardon; because of the other, you must go to God for cleansing. There, in your heart, like some black well-head in a dismal bog, is the source of all the swampy corruption that fills your life. You cannot stanch it, drain it, sweeten it. Ask Him, who is above your nature and without it, to change it by His own new life infused into your spirit. He will heal the bitter waters. He alone can.

III. PRAYERS FOR PERFECT CLEANSING ARE PERMITTED TO THE LIPS OF THE GREATEST SINNERS. Such longings as these might seem audacious, when the atrocity of the crime is remembered, and by man's standard they are so. Let the criminal be thankful for escape, and go hide himself, say men's pardons. But here is a man, with the evil savour of his debauchery still tainting him, daring to ask for no mere impunity, but for God's choicest gifts. Does not a prayer like this seem as if it were but adding to his sin? But, thank God, it is not so. Let no sin, however dark, however repeated, drive us to despair of ourselves, because it hides from us our loving Saviour. Though beaten back again and again by the surge of our passions and sins, like some poor shipwrecked sailor sucked back with every retreating wave and tossed about in the angry surf, yet keep your face towards the beach where there is safety, and you will struggle through it all, and, though it were but on some floating boards and broken pieces of the ship, will come safe to land. He will uphold you with His Spirit, and take away the weight of sin that would sink you, by His forgiving mercy, and bring you out of all the weltering waste of waters to the solid shore.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

WEB: Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.