“With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous. This God—his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him” (Psalms 18:25-26, 30 ESV).
David opens his proof of the Lord’s truth by illustrating a biblical principle penned to the Galatians centuries later by the Apostle Paul, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7 ESV).
This principle proves true because it is based in the character of God. He is merciful and blameless, pure and humble, David writes, and because of such those who sow the same will be treated equivalently.
The Galatians’ context was to keep the church before their established teachers of grace versus running to the legalism taught by the Judaizers. Hence verse six’s exhortation, shared now in Wuest’s expanded translation:
“Stop leading yourselves astray. God is not being outwitted and evaded. For whatever a man is in the habit of sowing, this also will he reap” and meaning “it is vain to think that one can outwit God by reaping a harvest different from that which a person has sown.”[1]
Similarly the context in David’s prose was reward in righteousness and cleanness, denoting it is vain to think we can live (sow) an unholy life and expect (reap) holy benefits.
I quoted Wuest because of the word “habit.”
Habit means an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary.
In order to reap the benefits of mercifulness and blamelessness, purity and humility, they simply cannot be sown sporadically. Rather, they must become a pattern of life in order to reap appropriately—that is, in order “to run against a troop and leap over a wall” (Psalm 18:29)!
