Going through the Word today, and also through today’s entry for Our Daily Bread, I am reminded of how, in the Old Covenant, the focus was on our Obedience to God’s commandments… versus how, in the New Covenant, we’re Abiding in the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.
In other words, we used to ‘do’ for God to ‘do’ (The Ministry of Condemnation), but now we celebrate because Christ ‘did’ for us to ‘do’ by the Holy Spirit, for the Father’s will (Ministry of Righteousness).
Just thought I’d put that somewhere before I kept going.
Yesterday I made a quick post on what I thought were my thoughts on the first section of the acrostic 119 Psalm, the one so intimidating for being so long.
The thing is, there were a whole bunch of other thoughts I wrote down before sending that one off to be posted, and I wanted to go through it in this post.
I’m spending a lot more time than I should on this, because I want to be off on a good start.
One thing I’d like to share from my heart regarding this venture, as we keep going: I understand that the entire Psalm does place emphasis on keeping, cherishing, otherwise valuing God’s word, God’s law, God’s statutes, God’s testimonies, and so on… But, even after going through the entire Psalm just today, again after a long time, and seeing this one general theme, I’m going to insist that each section of the Psalm has its own unique theme for us to unearth.
Another thing I want to establish as we go through this entire Psalm: We’re looking at it from the lens of the finished work of Christ.
I’d like to mention that it’s probably no accident that I’ve decided to hop into this venture while my congregation and I are also going through the book of Romans.
As of last Sunday, we’ve touched on Romans 8 – the halfway point – And at the time I thought it appropriate for us to establish what we’ve been talking about so far. I’m inclined to share it here so you, dear reader, would also be brought up to speed to what we have in our minds, as we go through Psalm 119.
We’ve established that we were once under Adam, who was the first to disobey God, through whom sin entered the world, resulting in separation from God, and, consequently, death.
We’ve also established that through the Law, sin ‘came to life’ – that is, because of the perfect nature of the Law, our imperfections were defined; it did not matter if we were Jew or Greek, for one way or the other, we were revealed as sinners, doomed to suffer the wrath of God (our being left to suffer the consequences of sin), and the righteous judgment of God (His rendering to us according to our works and thoughts).
But praise God! For, as mentioned in Romans 3, the righteousness of God has been revealed to us which was (1) apart from the Law, and (2) by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ!
For while we were sinners and enemies of God, it was Christ who stepped out of glory to be born as one of us, lay His life down to suffer the death the Law demanded; But He rose from the dead, proving He took ALL our sin and died ALL the death we deserved; Christ fulfilled ALL the Law required, and He ascended to heaven, that the Holy Spirit may dwell upon us all.
Therefore, we are now under grace – under CHRIST, who obeyed God and proclaimed us righteous – that is, reconciled and restored to right-standing with God, dead to the power of sin and flesh, free from the Law, free and ALIVE unto God!
Quite the mouthful! however, it needed to be pointed out, if only for us to recognize and realize that now, as the end of Romans 8 says, NOTHING can separate us from the love of God… through Christ, who is alive in us, who is both God’s Will and His Word.
Psalm 119:1-8
ALEPH
1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD!
2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart,
3 who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!
4 You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
5 Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
6 Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.
8 I will keep your statutes; do not utterly forsake me!
If we were only going to take the Old Testament into consideration, we’d definitely be reminding each other to keep our ‘way’ ‘blameless’ – and we’d certainly keep telling each other to ‘walk in the Law of the LORD’.
Now, in light of Christ and His finished work, I would like to clarify how I’m not saying that we shouldn’t strive to be blameless anymore.
See, we can say that we’re still going to work on being blameless, we’re still wanting to keep His testimonies and seek Him with our whole heart, but that’s only because we’ve been made new creations, with new hearts that WANT to do this.
We can also strive to be blameless because Christ has made us blameless. To be a little more precise, we strive to be blameless in this world, in celebration of Christ making us blameless forever.
We can aim to be blameless now that we have the option to do so, versus how it was for us before Christ, when ALL we did was… ‘guilty, culpable, blameworthy, and punishable’ (thank you, Merriam-Webster).
We can also see how the verse implies that our way ought to be blameless in order to be blessed, but now, we can move for our way to be blameless, FROM being blessed – That is, we’ve already been blessed, so we can make our way blameless.
Finally, for this verse in particular, we can say that we realize how our way is blameless, because Christ HIMSELF IS our Way, much as He is our Truth, and our Life.
There’s really so many ways for us to approach all of this… and if you haven’t already noticed, we’re STILL on the first verse. Clearly, Christ’s finished work has implied so much for us, that we could extract so much possibilities from ONE verse, or even half a verse for this matter!
You could see how I’m still at wits’ end as to how I should be approaching this, or even IF I should go through this Psalm. I regret to mention how I’m still trying to figure it out, and I’m praying in the process.
I mean, just going through Aleph, I’m trying to see one point to share from this section specifically, beneath the general importance of keeping God’s word. Is it merely to proclaim, that as we keep His Word, we are both blessed and kept from shame?
Am I thinking about this too much?
Just thought I’d keep you all in the loop as to what I was up to. Please pray with me as I do want to get started on this, as soon as I can.
Until the next post, may the Lord continue to bless us all in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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