This king was marked by a deep appreciation for justice and hatred for evil. So much so that it resembled that same appreciation and hatred in God. How rare this is today, to see a genuine love for true justice and an intense hatred for wickedness. You may see on TV or the internet or in a newspaper the account of a shocking crime committed in your neighbourhood. An innocent victim has been brutally murdered and the criminal is still at large. Because of the evidence at the scene you are told, they seem to have murdered simply because they love to murder. It is a sick and senseless crime.

In such cases, that are happening all around us now, and to us, you can easily be filled with a sense of outrage at the evil nature of such a crime. You can easily become consumed by a sense of justice, desiring the full penalty of the law to be brought down on the wild hooligans who know no restraint. Your heart beats both with this love for justice and hatred for evil. We are all aware of this in our hearts.

The difficulty comes when it is you yourself who are faced with the delightful attraction of your own personal sin. Your love for justice is tested when you sin against God by gossip, laziness, exaggerating the details of a story, lusting after a voluptuous woman in your heart. Your hatred for sin is tested when you are faced with a sin that you find uniquely attractive, and the appeal is so strong you feel you simply can’t resist the urge! Where is your hatred for evil then? Where is your love for justice then? Oh, if only we could see how little we really do love justice and hate evil. If only we could see how much, on the contrary we actually hate justice and love evil, we would be able to appreciate the weight of this great person portrayed for us in this psalm. He loves justice and hates wickedness, not only when it is in an external case he must judge, but in his very own heart!

It is in this unique quality that this king, and in the fullest measure, the great Lord Jesus (Hebrews 1:8) is set completely apart from all other people. Even though the Lord Jesus is the only one of whom these statements are entirely true, the human king before the psalmist’s eyes exhibits these qualities to a degree that is still outstandingly attractive. It is this quality that sets the king apart from other people in a radical way. What seems to be a small distinction is in fact an issue that describes a radically different and more mature heart than that possessed by people who don’t have these qualities. A person who loves justice and hates wickedness is a person whose heart is pounding with attractive spiritual virtues that do not yet concern the hearts of sin-controlled people.