Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”
Let the house of Aaron say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”
Let those who fear the LORD say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”
Psalm 118:1-4
You hear folks of the Christian persuasion go about with those lines made famous by Don Moen: ‘God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good’ ; In these moments when you couldn’t help but ask HOW this God is good, well, Psalm 118 opens with a sort of explanation – God is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.
It is HIS love. Love that only HE could give, and love that could only come from HIM. His love is steadfast; but here’s the thing. When you try to go deeper and look up more possible elaboration to ‘steadfast’ from interpretations deriving from the original Hebrew, you don’t actually see a direct translation for ‘steadfast’; No, in the place of steadfast love, we have ‘mercy’ (in the e-Sword app’s ‘KJV+’ version)… and the literal Hebrew word that was represented as ‘mercy’ was… חֵסֵד, or ‘chêsêd’
And right off the bat this is intriguing me, because Pastor Joseph Prince does rave about chesed and its familiarities with the Greek ‘charis’, which means grace, in general. At this point I feel there is a need for us to pull up a little more about chesed and charis.
/* Before I move any further, I just want to make it clear that I’m taking casual sips of Gold Label Reserve on the rocks, and I was strumming the guitar a little. Tried matching The Anchor by New Life Worship and From The Inside Out by Hillsong United – they were both in C, but I feel if we play around with the tempo a little we might be able to pull it off. I don’t know – I’ve been singing and praying a lot lately, instead of doing other things that I know I should be doing, and lately I’ve been doing it all with a little bit of alcohol. Just being open about it here. Tonight, I thought I’d ride off the buzz with writing. */
charis / khar’-ece / graciousness (as gratifying), of manner or act (abstract or concrete; literal, figurative or spiritual; especially the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life; including gratitude): – acceptable, benefit, favour, gift, grace (-ious), joy liberality, pleasure, thank (-s, -worthy).
chêsêd / kheh’-sed / kindness; by implication (towards God) piety; rarely (by opprobrium) reproof, or (subjectively) beauty: – favour, good deed (-liness, -ness), kindly, (loving-) kindness, merciful (kindness), mercy, pity, reproach, wicked thing.
Now first of all, we should all probably consider that you can’t have mercy without grace, nor can you have grace without mercy. Grace is an act of mercy, and mercy is an act of grace. Just a consideration of what it means when you talk about both of them, or if you’re looking for a bigger picture for both virtues.
Notice also, one word stands out as being in common in the elaboration of both charis and chesed, and that is favour: (1) approval, support, or liking for someone or something, or (2) an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual, according to our good friends at Merriam-Webster. What is this telling me? Well, in the context of Psalm 118, it’s telling me that God’s approval and support for me endure forever… but also, He LIKES me. Many times I’ve pointed out how we all like to hear how God loves us, but it hits us differently when we hear that He likes us. Without looking at a dictionary, if I hear that someone likes me, I’m intrigued, or at the very least tickled. I guess our God isn’t content to express, through Christ, that He has an everlasting love for me – Through Christ’s finished work, we can also take in that God has a liking for us, one that endures forever!
The way I understand a ‘liking’ does have its roots in ‘favour’ – When I’m liked, I’m looked at with favor. That means that even if I do make a blunder, or if I stumble and fall, the One who looks at me favorably, the One who likes me isn’t so quick to go ahead and say, ‘I knew it’, or any other statement that connotes He didn’t believe in me. On the other hand, He looks beyond cynicism whenever I do win, or whenever I celebrate – I imagine how He celebrates with me, understanding how important these temporal things I’ve attained or achieved are to me, and celebrating at my level.
BUT on the other hand, while we do enjoy His favorable liking and approval towards us, look – our God is truly as a Father to us, expressing chesed towards us – though it does say it’s rarely expressed that way, I imagine He does it when He deems it necessary in His wisdom, to be kind to us by way of reproof, or ‘opprobrium’: mid 17th century: from Latin, literally ‘infamy’, from opprobrum, from ob- ‘against’ + probrum ‘disgraceful act’. In His charis, or in His chesed which endures forever, we’re always under His favour (that is, His ‘approval, support, or liking for’ us), and bracing for His ‘acts of kindness beyond what is due’.
It ALL ties in with how Peter writes in a favorite verse; The second part of 1 Peter 5:7 says He cares for us – but if we look at the AMP, we get a bigger picture: ‘He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully]‘
I could go on, but I think I’ll stop here. I have a lot on my mind, but it was just good to run into the Scriptures tonight. Definitely doing this again soon.
God is good, for His chesed endures forever. What else can we do, but to give Him thanks?
And in our gratitude, let the nations around us, let the body of Christ say, in unison: ‘His steadfast love endures forever.’
God bless us all.
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