“Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” (Psalm 44:26 ESV).
Psalm 44 was written as a communal lament for God’s suffering people. The psalmists remembered how God had given Israel victory in the past, yet they now found themselves defeated, humiliated, and oppressed. What made their suffering especially confusing was their insistence that they had not abandoned God or forgotten His covenant. Their suffering was not the obvious consequence of some particular act of rebellion.
Yet when they reached their final appeal, they did not say, “Redeem us because we have been faithful.” They prayed, “Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.” Their ultimate confidence rested not in their merit, but in God’s mercy. As Spurgeon summarized it, “The favour is redemption, the plea is mercy.”
The New Testament gives this psalm an even deeper significance. Paul quoted Psalm 44:22 in Romans 8:36 to describe the suffering of believers. Yet he immediately declared that suffering cannot separate us from “the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). In Christ, God has given the supreme demonstration of the steadfast love to which the psalmists appealed.
We may sometimes suffer without understanding why. Faithfulness does not exempt us from pain, nor does suffering necessarily mean that God is punishing us for some particular sin. When we cannot understand what God is doing, we can still trust who God is.
We do not come before Him claiming that our obedience has earned His help. We come through Christ, appealing to God’s steadfast love. Our confidence is not that we have been good enough or faithful enough. Our confidence is not our merit, but His mercy.
PRAYER: Dear Father, when we cannot understand what You are doing, help us trust who You are. We do not depend upon our own faithfulness, but upon Your steadfast love revealed perfectly in Christ. May Your mercy always be the ground of our confidence and prayer. In Jesus’ name, amen.