4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness;
No evil can dwell with You.
5 The boastful will not stand before Your eyes;
You hate all who do injustice.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
The Lord loathes the person of bloodshed and deceit. 1
1 New American Standard Bible, (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 2020), Psalm 5: 4–6.
No evil can dwell with You – the believer is a new creation in Christ, sanctified, separated for God, His own obsession, the wicked will not dwell with God
The boastful, those who think themselves to be something when they are nothing. Outside of Christ, we are all nothing. It is He that made us and not we and not we ourselves (Psalm 100:3). We must humble ourselves before the LORD. We must be born again (John 3:7). We must submit to His new covenant and be saved (Ephesians 2:8-9). To reject Him and His way of salvation is to be boastful. To live like we have no need of Him or His mercy is to make ourselves equal to Him – this is blasphemy.
Many great men have lived, and many have thought themselves to be something, many have desired and even mandated the admiration of others, like Herod. Think of the tyrants in our times who have their images plastered everywhere, or the mighty lawyers who buy so much advertising and present themselves as superheroes. They do not lack material possessions or even worshippers, but indeed they were nothing and will die like men. Only He deserves worship, for He created all things (Revelation 4:11).
Those who speak lies, unbelievers who set themselves to do evil, end up with a dead conscience speaking lies (1 Tim 4:1), rewriting history, and gaslighting others. Such decisions lead to denying reality and living in fantasy. This necessitates constant lying because, of course, the person is convinced of things that are not real and may succeed in convincing others of the same, or such others may enable them for personal benefit. God is light, and in Him is no darkness (1 John 1:5); we must be in reality if we will know and walk with God.
The person of bloodshed and deceit, this is a description of a kind of person; evil is not an abstract idea but more like something that works through persons. By decision, they may harden themselves to the point of deadening their conscience. By rationalization, evil is called good (Isaiah 5:20); this pattern can be witnessed in crime documentaries and podcasts. A decision is made to live a life of hurting, using others, because it pays more and is “easier” than the drudgery others will endure to earn a living. Instead of acknowledging and accepting the reality that it is indeed difficult and a drudgery, because this world is under a curse and we must eat by the sweat of our face (Genesis 3:19), the wicked seek to reject this reality and take the easy path that requires hurting others to accumulate wealth for themselves.
The Narcos in Mexico deceive and numb themselves to the suffering and oppression they cause others to gain control of entire cities and states. They rule the poor avocado farmers with an iron fist, reaping the benefits of their labor, such that these farmers do not gain from the fruit of their labor and merely survive while the Narcos reap the benefits of this lucrative product. Over and over, this pattern of rationalizing, deceiving oneself, is used to justify a life of exploiting and harming others for one’s own ease and indulgence.
But as a believer in Christ, if you have known him, you, at some point, had to recognize the reality that you do not love your neighbour as yourself. That shocking revelation then humbled you to receive His grace and mercy, and He adopted you into His family, separating you from the wicked, translating you to His kingdom of light and righteousness.
Following the path of the wicked will never lead one to the reality that we fall short of the glory of God and are in dire need of His mercy. Instead, the wicked assert a right to harm their neighbor and may live this way all their lives. We witness this at the national level, where the rich oppress the poor more and more, and the divide continues to grow. The rich may pass laws that allow them to exploit others, give themselves more tax breaks, or create loopholes to exploit at the expense of the masses but we understand that this is not heaven, it is earth under a curse, groaning to be freed and for the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:19). These sons will be revealed with the coming King, Christ, who will rule in righteousness and justice (Jeremiah 33:15, Psalm 9:8, Psalm 98:9).