NOTES for Psa 143
The psalmist cries out for the Lord to hear him according to His righteousness, although he himself understands that if He truly judges according to righteousness, no one will be able to justify himself before Him. But why appeal to righteousness when you understand in advance that you will not withstand it?
The very fact that we trust God and want to follow His commandments means that we are interested in knowing about ourselves the truth that He will reveal to us. And although we have already learned that the Lord is merciful and that His judgment is not formal and superficial, as human judgment often is, nevertheless, before asking Him for mercy, we must obtain a sober view of ourselves and of the things we so often get up to. To understand and feel all this properly, it can be useful to see how our actions, so familiar to us, look from the outside. And then we are appalled.
But the Lord, unlike people, not only allows us to be appalled; He also saves us. He saves us from what distorts us, but what we often quite wrongly regard as an inseparable part of ourselves.