¹I love the Lord, because He hears my voice and my supplications. ²Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live.

This psalm is a beautiful expression of personal love for and devotion to the Lord. It begins with a concise statement: “I love the Lord….” The meaning of the underlying Hebrew word ahab is fairly broad, lining up somewhat with our popular English word love. It connotes affection in personal relationships (as a man loves a woman) or desire when directed toward inanimate objects, for example, “I love ice cream.”

This opening assertion sets the tone for the rest of the psalm and so deserves some analysis. The word here is not the Hebrew word hesed, translated as God’s lovingkindness (or covenantal love), which is a commitment to the wellbeing of His people rooted in His covenantal commitment to them. Nor is this the same as agape love used in the NT. As popularly explained, agape love is not a “love if” or “love because” but is a “love period!” However, in Psalm 116, the godly psalmist unabashedly proclaims, “I love the Lord, because ….” His affection for God does not come from an inner well of totally altruistic benevolence. We cannot possibly love God without reason or cause—because we are not God. Only He can do that, a mystery we will never fully understand. He doesn’t love us because of anything worthy in us, but He loves us out of the wellspring of His infinite character of love. As the apostle John writes, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16, emphasis added).

The Lord’s noncontingent love for us is a mystery far beyond our puny minds’ ability to comprehend, but knowing this truth, as God has revealed Himself, is fundamental to our eternal life in Him. The Lord invites us to fully enjoy being loved by Him, and we will do so for eternity. Only as we rest securely in God’s love for us can we love God and others. In this, we follow the apostle John’s lead; he identified himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and wrote, “We love because He first loved us” (John 20:2, 21:7, 1 John 4:19). Our ability to love God is contingent on His loving us.

The psalmist doesn’t just love that God hears him and responds to his needs. No, he loves God. There is a categorical difference between loving the gift versus loving the gift-giver. He loves the Lord; the reason why he loves the Lord is because of God’s posture of leaning into him. He moves from what God does for him (the gift) to the Lord Himself (the Giver). As a result, the writer is (and we are also) encouraged to confidently “call upon Him” (vs. 2).

This love letter resonates with all who have discovered the love of God and the experience of daring to approach Him with confidence and boldness (see Heb. 4:16). This is not just a spiritual transaction but a relationship of affection and commitment. The psalmist gives a brief reprise of what was a recent near-death experience (vs. 3). But he cast himself on the Lord by expanding the wording from vs. 2: “I called upon the name of the Lord,” which he equated with the succinct prayer for help: “O Lord, I beseech You, save my life!” (vs. 4). The Lord answered his cry for help, though the psalmist did not think it necessary to give the details of his experience. His single-minded focus was on what he discovered about God, namely that He is gracious, righteous, and compassionate (vs. 6). He characterizes the Lord as not being pre-disposed to the high and mighty but to the simple and lowly.

For the rest of the psalm, we learn how to respond to discovering the Lord amid our difficulties in life. We need to rest in the Lord, based on the knowledge of how God has proven Himself in the past (vs. 7-8). Although our difficulty may not be as life-threatening as it was for the psalmist, few believers have not had emotionally challenging times where our faith was in danger of stumbling (vs. 8). At those times, we need to resolve to not live in fear of any harm or death but to walk confidently as those walking in the land of the living. We need to stop focusing on negative thinking (“I am greatly afflicted”) and what others are saying (“I said in my alarm, ‘All men are liars’”) (vss. 9-12).

How can a believer show his trust in the Lord for all He has done and will do? (vs. 12). The answer is twofold. 1) “Lift up the cup of salvation … and call upon the name of the Lord” (vs. 13). This means a public display of trusting the Lord to secure a rescue from the current trial. The believer should move beyond the desire to be rescued to the point of seeing the Lord Himself as his rescue. 2) “I shall pay my vows to the Lord, oh may it be in the presence of His people” (vs. 14). The believer’s confidence in God should be demonstrated in his everyday worship and sacrifices to the Lord, and not suspending the outward forms of godliness (vs. 14).

Verse 15 is one of the most intimate in all Scripture: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.” We think of the Lord as precious to us (or we want that to be true), but here we see the psalmist’s unshakeable faith forged in the cauldron of severe suffering and fear. This is what the Lord sees as precious to Him, the “death of His godly ones.”

What? On first reading, that seems rather macabre, shocking, and even sadistic. Does God like to see us suffer and die? No! In the context of this psalm, the Lord sees the preciousness of a person who does not abandon his deep faith and commitment to the Lord who loves him, even when facing extreme suffering and death. This reflects the very image of God back to Him, for as Scripture unfolds, God gave His only begotten Son to die for us. Does this not speak of the profound love relationship with God, where He may bring us through deep waters, even death, and test our faith to prove it genuine? That is what resonates as precious to the Lord.

So, in the end, I need to take my place as one who is “simple” and “lowly” (vs. 6) and a servant of God, not of myself and my own well-being. If God is the focus and not just the benefits He gives us, then we can say like Job, “Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15), and like Daniel’s three friends would say, that even if God didn’t save them from Nebuchadnezzar’s threat of death, they would not abandon God by worshipping false idols (3:17-18). They all knew their God. And we know our God, and we are His servants. The psalmist, for emphasis, repeats his commitment to “call on the name of the Lord” with sacrifices and vows and to praise the Lord (vs. 17-19) in worship.

Lord, following the example of the apostle Paul, I want to “know [Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh] and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil. 3:10-11)