This Psalm is Christ as the object of God's deliverance or saving power, including its desire and acknowledgment—both important as showing the position of Christ. It takes Him, in His whole position as a Jew, from His first trial to the deliverance of the Jews in that day. The Name is the manifestation of the internal and essential power, and character, precisely what is obscured and refused in this world of confusion and evil. The judging is just the intervention of that Name in power, so as to vindicate the consistency of Christ with it—the thread of order, of which Christ was the witness, and which was attached to His name in the midst of evil, because He was it, and therefore the vindication of it was the vindication of God's name; and so the saving by His name was peculiarly appropriate, for indeed it was the declaration of the identity of that Name in God with Christ, as in the world, for He had that Name in weakness. Therefore He says, "Judge me by thy strength," i.e., "Vindicate, as to me in weakness, that character and name which is thine in strength, by the putting forth of thy strength, as vindicating itself." Now this is true as regards man, by its conformity, and as regards the object even, on account of its very weakness, because graciousness of love, and faithfulness of kindness is part of the very Name to be revealed. This cannot be pursued further here. "Thou hast loved," etc. is part of it—"0 righteous Father" is again another—and “My God, my God," etc., and “Therefore doth my Father"; so "Not unto us," etc., and even "Be merciful unto my sin, it is great," proceeds on the same principle.
This is a subject full of interest, because the Church can always go on this ground of unfailing righteousness, and say “Not unto us." The Church is in the character of God, and in this weakness therefore it cries, and therefore it cries for the vindication of this character. So Christ was enabled to say “I know that thou hearest me always," but therefore also “Judgment must begin at the house of God." Thus Christ put Himself under these things, and “It became him” etc.; but “If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” For the judgment and character of God run on unchanged, and as He judges by, so will He judge in His strength. But Christ is the vindication of the principles of God, because He is their personification in that very weakness, in which the question arises. The application of God's power settles it; see note on the transaction after Christ's baptism. But we must not pursue this further here.
It seems to me that this Psalm also would seem to make Christ speak in the language of mediatorial praise, as well as affliction; and observe the reason.
In this Psalm it is, unusually, the name of God, and the strength of God which is appealed to, but, as we have seen, before God is proved (an only refuge actually for the position in which Christ sees things) in contrast with all men, it puts the relationship in which the Spirit of Christ finds itself consequent upon the truth of Psa. 53 They are strangers—God is not before them—God is His helper. It was not now a matter of covenant, for all this was forsaken, but abstract faith in God. But this faith produces—sense, and application of covenant. Christ is alone in “Me” (v. 2), but “Jehovah is with them that uphold my soul." The sense of favor, on God's principles towards others, is the restoration of one's own soul in righteousness; not “with me," for He was as an outcast for our sake, because perfect, His trust in God as the one only perfect Man, but this induced and became the object of all concentrating grace afterward. Therefore it is Jehovah, and all the trouble in result is passed—the moral history of all that shall arrive in that day.