Psalm 103 13-17
‘Bless the Lord…, Who redeems Your life from destruction!… Your youth is renewed like the eagle’s!… The Lord…knows our frame…, that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. Like a flower of the field, so he flourishes…. The wind passes over it, and it is gone! But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting, upon them that fear Him!’ Psalm 103 1-17.
Calvin comments that “the Lord ‘redeems your life from the grave’…. Previous to God’s curing our maladies…, we are dead and adjudged to the grave!… That the mercy of God delivers us from death and destruction, ought therefore to lead us to prize it the more highly. The resurrection of the soul from the grave is the first step of spiritual life….
“The Psalmist…adds…God was…infusing into him new vigour, so that his strength continued unimpaired. Even as the Prophet Isaiah (65:20), in discoursing on the restoration of the Church, says that a man of a hundred years old shall be like a child…. His strength was, as it were, continually renewed…. The eagle…continues fresh and vigorous, even to extreme old age…. As eagles always retain their vigour and even in their old age are still youthful, so the godly are sustained by a secret influence derived from God, by which they continue in the possession of unimpaired strength….
“They have been brought out of the grave, and have experienced God to be bountiful to them…. When our outward man decays, we are renewed to a better life…. He sustains us by His Spirit, under the weakness and languishing of our mortal frames.”
The Lord ‘knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust…. Man’s days are like grass…. The wind passes over it, and it is gone!’ Comments Calvin: “All the excellency of man withers away like a fading flower, at the first blast of the wind…. David grants that he flourishes like the grass…. Yet…our life is only a show or phantom that passes away.
“The subject here…is…the brevity of life…. David…declares us to be dust and clay…. Although the soul, after it has departed from…the body, remains alive — yet its doing so does not arise from any inherent power of its own. Were God to withdraw His grace, the soul would be nothing more than a puff or blast, even as the body is dust!…
“‘But the goodness of Jehovah (is from everlasting to everlasting)!’ The Psalmist leaves nothing to men to rely on, but the mercy of God…. Although they have no intrinsic excellence which does not vanish into smoke, yet God is an inexhaustible fountain of life to supply their wants…. As the Divine goodness is everlasting, the weakness and frailty of the faithful does not prevent them from boasting of eternal salvation to the close of life, and even in death itself!”
Calvin also says in his Institutes II:10:15: “He who confesses…there is nothing…stable on the Earth…, undoubtedly contemplates a happiness reserved for him elsewhere!… After speaking of human life as…fleeting…, he adds: ‘The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him!’ (Psalm 103:17).” God, Who knows that we are dust, is everlasting — to us!
