“Depart from me, all you who do iniquity, for the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping.” (Psalm 6:8)

It should be instructive to us that David’s response to God answering his desperate prayer was holiness, and not libertinism.  There was nothing in David of the attitude one often sees in people: that since God had delivered him, he could now just celebrate and fall back into sin. No, instead his response of gratitude to God was to consecrate himself, and for him to bid the workers of iniquity to depart from him.

If this sounds “self righteous” or “extreme”, you might consider that Jesus Himself quotes this verse in Matthew 7:23, telling those who claimed to know Him but lived hypocritically that He would one day banish them from His presence.

This verse is a strong reminder that the response of the Christian to God’s deliverances in our lives is not to let down our guard, or to thoughtlessly slide back into old habits. Rather, having experienced God’s blessings, we should recommit ourselves to holiness.

In fact, this is often one of the ways we can discern if a person is genuinely Christian, or if they were just “using” God to help them out of their exigency. The true Christian heart responds with renewed commitment and holiness, not license and excess.  For him it is never, “God has been good to me, so I can go back to the way I was”, but rather, “Let me be all the more committed to Him because of His undeserved kindnesses towards me. ‘Depart from me, all you who do iniquity’.”