The Good News (note the capital letters!) is that God sends His Holy Spirit into me - into my heart, mind, soul, and spirit - to override my human nature. So it is that Paul, writing in his letter to the Philippians, indicates that actions that seem to be our actions are actually God’s actions. It is God who produces in us the desires and actions that please Him:
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
It is God, and not me, who first creates the sanctified “will” inside me - the desire to what is good - and then who is working within me that I act in order to fulfill His good purpose. So it is not me who desires to do good, but rather God causing that desire within me. It is not me who does actions that please Him, but rather God causing me to act thus.
As Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “I no longer live, but” Jesus “lives in me.” Therefore anything good - desires or actions - is attributed to God.
Likewise, in the letter to the Hebrews, the author of that text informs us that when we “do His will,” it is not only because He has first “equipped us,” but also because He is “working in us.”
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight.
First God equips me, then He works in me that which is pleasing in His sight.
When Paul writes to the Ephesians that God “is over everything, through everything, and in everything,” and when he writes to the Colossians that Jesus “is everything and in everything,” these texts show us that God is everywhere and always active: when Paul writes that God is “through” everything, it means that He is active “by means of” everything.
So it is that the Psalmist sees God as active. God has “pity on me,” wipes “out my rebellious acts,” washes “me thoroughly from my guilt,” cleanses “me from my sin,” hands “down justice,” teaches “me wisdom,” purifies “me from sin,” washes me, wipes “out all that I have done wrong,” creates “a clean heart in me,” renews “a faithful spirit within me,” restores “the joy of” His “salvation to me,” provides “me with a free spirit,” and rescues “me from guilt” (cf. Psalm 51).
Commenting on this Psalm, Luther writes:
Grace means the favor by which God accepts us, forgiving sins, and justifying freely through Christ.
God accepts us - even though we are unacceptable. We do not accept God because we cannot accept God: we lack that ability. God plants the good impulse into us. It is a gift from Him.
