Introduction

 “Cast me not away from your presence / and take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11). Any self-respecting—or at least honest!—Evangelical Protestant has a bit of a guttural reaction to praying or hearing this verse prayed aloud. Why exactly that is, we will explore below; but read it again, and feel it: it’s like your soul is chewing tinfoil. I mean, really? “Take not your Spirit from me”? The Spirit who dwells in me? The Spirit who was given to me as a down payment of eternal salvation? C’mon, I know it’s a Psalm, but that’s too old covenant for us new covenant Christians to actually pray, right? Shouldn’t another, more proper Psalm be used for confessions public and private? The answer to these questions isn’t just a simple “well, maybe but unfortunately no.” We must not tamper with the Word of God by multiplying prophylactics when it chafes us. We must conform our theology to the Word rather than the other way around. When we consider the rest of Scripture, we find that, in fact, this verse in many ways is the essential verse for understanding what exactly is at stake in sin and what exactly is offered in Christ. Let’s explore.

Context and Composition

 Before we begin to explore the full implications of Psalm 51:11, though, we must as always remember that (a) context determines content and (b) composition clues meaning. The context in this case is David’s sin with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of Uriah the Hittite (2 Sam. 16). David is praying after this double sin, which deserved not merely excommunication but also execution. Moreover, David’s prayer, insofar as it particularly invokes God’s covenant presence, is referencing the dwelling of God with Israel in the tabernacle set up in “the city of David” (2 Sam. 6:2-17). Above cherubim-flanked ark, Yahweh’s glory presence dwelt with Israel (Ex. 13:17-18, 21-22). Herein is the second key: composition clues meaning. Hebrew poetry, and particularly the Psalms, works by parallelism, which means that the second line of poetry unpacks the meaning of the first.¹ When he prays, then, that he would not be “cast from His presence” (i.e., out of Zion, where the ark of God’s covenant presence dwelt), this means that the Spirit would be taken from him—not directly, as pouring water out of a glass, but by being removed from the Spirit’s presence in the tabernacle.² In effect, excommunication from the place of God’s covenant presence is the removal of the Holy Spirit.

Three Points to Ponder

 These points bring us to a necessary aside—namely, that we cannot simply say, “Well, that was the old covenant. The Spirit now dwells not in the Tabernacle but in all believers individually.” Thus, we often think cannot pray this prayer without a mental footnote attached that says something along the lines of “as if You really could.” Consider three further points about the Spirit’s work in the new covenant:

 The first two points are simple. First, the Holy Spirit dwells in the Church, the whole company of God’s elect. As Abraham Kuyper says in The Work of the Holy Spirit, “[The Spirit’s being] ‘in all,’ referring to the number of the elect, signifies that in them, not individually, but collectively as the body of Christ, Love’s triumph shall be complete.”³ Adam, filled with the Spirit at his Primal Pentecost (Gen. 2:), willingly forfeited the glorifying presence of the Spirit within him at his Primal Apostacy. Thus, humanity became simply “soul-beings, lacking Spirit” (Jude 19). This absence of the Spirit in and not merely with humanity (the condition of old covenant [Ex. 13; Rom. 8:14; Joel 2:28-29]) is precisely the condition that necessitates the incarnation and resurrection of Christ, Who came to give nothing if not the Gift of the Spirit back to the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve (Joel 2:28ff). Indeed, the redemption that is ours in Christ finds its telos in the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church (John 16:7; Gal. 3:14; Rom. 8); thus, after the resurrection, Jesus first reconstitutes the Apostles as New Adams in His image in a very recognizable way: “He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22).

 Second, we note that, since He belongs to the Church as a whole through the ministry of these Spirit-inspired Apostles, the Holy Spirit is nowhere said to indwell all believers as autonomous individuals. Please note the operative word here: autonomous. The New Testament nowhere suggests that the Spirit does dwells in individuals, in particular Christians, as if he were the only Christian that existed.⁴ I am not saying is that the Spirit does not in any sense dwell in every believer. He does certainly dwell in every believer personally. But a person is not an individual. Individuals are isolated and remote, like Adam suspended in the “not good” time before Eve. Individuals are the product of liberal modernity. Persons, however, are the product of relationships. A prosopon (Greek: person) is one who is “before the face of another.” This is a truth that cuts to the mystery of reality. For God is not made up of three individuals; that would be the heresy of Tritheism or Modalism. God is, however, a communion of three persons, only known insofar as One make the Other known. Personhood is a gift received and given; individualism is an identity self-secured at the expense and to the exclusion of another.⁵ Thus, every time that Scripture uses the pronoun you in reference to believers’ being indwelt by the Spirit, those pronouns are plural and would be best translated “you all”—or, if we were writing a Southern English Version, y’all.⁶

 The third point is all-important. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is “in us” not by immediate infusion but by covenant incorporation. We are only indwelt insofar as we indwell. There is no Spirit-indwelling presence apart from or alongside of but only inside of the Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit dwells in us in the same way that a tree’s sap gives life to tree branches. An individual branch can never be said to have sap in and of itself. On the contrary, the branches only have sap dwelling in them because they dwell in the tree. If the branch is cut off from the tree, there is no life remaining in it; for it receives its sap life not by an individual infusion with sap from the source but only by incorporation into the tree, which mediates the sap from the source.⁷ There is, actually, a simpler way to say this:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15:5-6).

Ah, that’s better; but citing Jesus here and from this passage is much more than a rhetorical slight of hand. In the entire arc of this passage, Christ Jesus is describing how our relationship to Him is to mirror that of the relationship between the Father and the Son—namely, personal yet inseparable (John 17:20-26). The radical implication here is this: we have no more share in the Holy Spirit if we are not a part of Christ’s Body than the Son would have if he were to separate Himself from the eternal covenant of the Holy Trinity. Incorporation into Christ’s Body proceeds and constitutes the sharing of the Spirit. Thus, neither the communal nor the personal may be ultimate because man is made in God’s image, and God is an “equal ultimacy” of community and personality, personality and community.⁸

Application

 So, what does this mean for Psalm 51:11? It means, frankly, that we not only can but must pray it. For nothing take us has the potential to away from the Body of Christ in which the Spirit (in)dwells except our high-handed sin, our blaspheming the Holy Spirit, grieving Him by refusing repentance. Thus, like David, we too, by a “sin that leads to death” (John 5:), can have the Holy Spirit taken from us not by immediate removal in a crude individualistic, Arminian sense but by a real excommunication from the presence of the Lord in His Body, the Church.⁹ Thus, each time we pray this prayer, we are both reminding ourselves of the real severity of sin’s penalty and the real danger of unrepentance. “Take not your Holy Spirit from me,” then, becomes for us the sincerest expression of our desire to remain in Christ’s Body by and for fellowship with the Triune God by our forsaking sin and putting it to death by the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God (Eph. 6:17).

Conclusion

 Therefore, Psalm 51:11 is the essential verse for understanding what exactly is at stake in sin and what exactly is offered in Christ’s Body. Our participation in the Spirit by membership in Christ’s Body is meant to make us professional sin killers. Yet, when we blow it again and again, we equally have the assurance that the Spirit in us is present not only to convict but to convict in order to reapply by confession and absolution the cleansing that we first received from Him at our baptism (Titus 3:5). When we pray Psalm 51:11, the implicit threat is real if we are unwilling to repent; but the Spirit is always willing to extend cleansing and renew our communion with the Father through His Son (John 14:25-31; 1 John 1:9). The only questions is if we, like David, are willing to recognize our need for mercy and receive it.

Gage Crowder teaches literature and Bible at Providence Classical School in Huntsville, Alabama. He is a contributing member of the Huntsville Literary Association and the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. His poetry and prose can be found in the The Legend, Poem Magazine, the Birmingham Arts Journal, Panoply and elsewhere.

1. John B. Gabel and Charles B. Wheeler, The Bible as Literature: An Introduction. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986), 38 et passim.

2. There’s a parallel here with the story of Saul. After Saul’s false repentance, we are told that the prophet Samuel “saw Saul no more till his dying day” (1 Sam. 15:34-35). Since there was no longer a Tabernacle in Shiloh nor yet a Temple on Zion where God was covenantally present with His people, the prophet Samuel himself functioned as God’s covenant presence to Israel and particularly Israel’s king, imparting the Spirit to him (cf. 1 Sam. 10:6-10; 1 Sam. 16:13), which is why Saul is dismayed at Samuel’s refusal to return to the people with him (1 Sam. 15:24-28). Indeed, in the absence of the ark (1 Sam. 4:1-7:2), the prophet Samuel, because he was indwelt by the Word of Yahweh, was a sort of “living tabernacle” or an “alternate ark.” Samuel is a type of Christ, the true and final prophet, Who is the Word of Yahweh incarnate (cf. John 1:14). Later, other prophets, especially Ezekiel, also function as a sort of “living temple” while Israel is away from the physical Temple in exile. Thus, Saul’s dismay over Samuel’s excommunication, and David’s dismay over his potential excommunicating are parallel or, at least, complementary. Indeed, when the story is recounted a few chapters later, the author does not simply say that “Samuel left Saul” but that “the Spirit of Yahweh had departed from Saul” (1 Sam. 16:14) When did this happen? When Samuel forsook Saul. For, the Spirit, Who dwelt with Saul through Samuel’s presence (1 Sam. 10:6-10), is removed from Saul (1 Sam. 16:14ff) because Saul is cut off from Samuel’s presence as the living locus of Yahweh’s Spirit in Israel. David, likewise, cut off from the immediate presence of Yahweh’s Spirit at Zion (Ps. 132:13-14), would have suffered the same fate as Saul.

3. Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), 545, Logos 9.

4. Trouble me not with the “what about the Christian stranded on an island.” Does the Spirit dwell in him in His fullness? Of course, and of course not.

5. Cf. Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (New York, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974) 111-123; Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: The Theology of the Body (Boston, MA: Pauline Press, 1986), 162-163, 178-190.

6. cf. Mark 13:11; Luke 12:12; John 14:17; John 14:26; Acts 1:8; esp. Rom. 8:9-11; 1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:22; James. 4:5.

7. None of this is to suggest that the Creator Spirit is bound by proximity. However, He is of His own will bound exclusively to the covenant community.

8. Cornelius Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1977), 232.

9. All of these points are blustered by our recent celebration of the Protestant Reformation. For the Reformers taught that one must actually persevere in active, living faith (James 2), as evidenced by our cooperating with the Holy Spirit to kill sin and live to righteousness as a member of the Body of Christ. In fact, the Reformed note that one of the essential marks of a True Church, in addition to the right preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments, is the right exercise of church discipline, which includes excommunication. See Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London, UK: Banner of Truth, 1949), 576. For the jarring reality of Hebrew 6:4 is the fact that those who apostatize from the Body of Christ of their own volition and by the solemn adjudication of a session of presbyters in accord with the Word of God “have shared in the Holy Spirit” really and truly. Yet, these can no longer be said to share in the Spirit precisely because they are cut off from the body of Christ.