What’s Happening?
As David is pursued by his enemies, he calls out to God for help (Psalm 7:1-2). David tells God to save him, because he is being unjustly persecuted by those who want to harm him. Refusing to believe his persecutors' judgment of him is correct, David puts judgment into God's hands: David will not refuse his punishment if he is guilty (Psalm 7:3). But in light of his innocence David asks God to pronounce justice against his enemies (Psalm 7:6). This is not an angry request for God to pick on people David doesn't like. David is simply affirming that God is a good and just judge (Psalm 7:8).
God judges the whole earth and saves the "upright in heart" (Psalm 7:10). However, he brings "the violence of the wicked" to an end (Psalm 7:9a). God tests the minds and hearts of people and returns their mischief on their own heads (Psalm 7:16). Because God is a righteous judge, the wicked pit that David's enemies dug out for him will be the same trap into which they fall (Psalm 7:15).
The psalm ends with David giving thanks to God, the judge, because of his righteousness (Psalm 7:17). God is good, perfect, just, equitable, and always right. Everyone who sees him as a judge will worship him, because who wouldn't want a perfect ruler, an impartial judge, and a blameless lawmaker?
Where is the Gospel?
In Jesus we can make the same claim as David. David's claim was not about his reputation but about his hands. He swears he has not done the thing his accusers say he has done, and he invites God to search him and find nothing there (Psalm 7:3-5). Satan, our own conscience, and others often accuse us, and Paul says there is now no condemnation for those who belong to Jesus. He also says why. God sent his Son and then sent his Spirit, so that the righteousness the law always asked for would actually be carried out in the people who walk by that Spirit (Romans 8:1-4).
David invites God to probe his mind and heart (Psalm 7:9). Through the prophets, God promised he would not stop at probing hearts. He said he would take out the hard heart, put a new one in its place, and set his own Spirit inside his people so that they would follow his ways from the inside (Ezekiel 36:26-27; Jeremiah 31:33). Jesus opened that promise. He was raised, ascended, and poured out the Spirit he had received on his people (Acts 2:33). Sin no longer owns them, and they have been handed over to righteousness instead, which now has their obedience (Romans 6:17-18). So when the God who tests hearts tests theirs, what he finds working there is his own Spirit.
Jesus was innocent, full of integrity, and completely righteous. He was hunted the way David was hunted, and he was accused of what he had not done. But he never asked God to bring his enemies down. He asked God to forgive them while they killed him (Luke 23:34). And the psalm's justice came anyway. The rulers who dug the pit fell into it, losing the power they thought they were using, disarmed by the very death they arranged (Psalm 7:15-16; 1 Corinthians 2:8; Colossians 2:15). In a way, Jesus does the opposite of what David prayed for. David asks to be saved from his enemies because of his innocence, but Jesus leverages his innocence to save his enemies.
Because the Spirit of God is at work in us, we can also ask God to act against wickedness as David did. We can ask him to silence the mouth of Satan, our accuser (James 4:7). We can plead with him to silence the lies of our self-condemning conscience, which he cleanses so that we are free to serve him (Hebrews 9:14). And we can beg him, as a good judge, to turn people's wickedness against them, while still forgiving them and interceding for them.
David gives thanks to God because of his righteousness. He sings praises because God is right to call him innocent and bring his enemies to account (Psalm 7:17). We can do the same. We can worship God because of his goodness in judging the wicked as guilty, and because he is making us into people whose hands are actually clean, filling us with his own Spirit so that his righteousness is done in us and through us.
See for Yourself
I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see God as the perfect and impartial judge over the whole world. And may you see Jesus as the one who pours out his Spirit to make us righteous, so that we can lift clean hands in God's court.