I have done what is just and right. Please do not leave me to my oppressors! Give Your servant a pledge of good. Let not the insolent oppress me. My eyes long for Your salvation and the fulfillment of Your righteous promise. Deal with Your servant according to Your steadfast love, and teach me Your statues. I am Your servant. Give me understanding, that I may know Your testimonies! It is time for the Lord to act, for Your law has been broken. Therefore I love Your commandments above gold, fine gold. Therefore I consider all Your precepts to be right. I hate every false way. (Verses 121-128)
Raised in a Christian home, Jon (not his real name) played by the rules. Didn't drink, smoke or have premarital sex. Married a virgin as a virgin. Believed in following God's statutes and precepts, expecting to receive the blessings of his chastity to the law. But his wife left him for another man. Turned his world upside down. Head spinning, heart crushed, faith destroyed. He'd done it all right and God allowed it all to go to hell. So, if God failed him, Jon, by God, would do whatever felt good. All the things he'd wanted to do but didn't. Sleep around, drink too much and sleep on Sundays when he used to go to church. And in his self-righteous anger, Jon is out to destroy his wife and her new lover. Actively. With great vengeance. Unlike the psalmist, Jon's attitude is, "Your laws have been broken and it's time for me to act because I don't trust You any more to do the right thing!"
Many of us have been raised in the church to trust in our own right living to garner us favor with God. I used to think God loved me because I was such a good little girl. Always wanting to do what He said. Closing my eyes to see God pat me on my little blond head. May I say this? God will dig that out of us if we are His children. It's a completely wrong perception of God's heart. We cannot ever be good enough to merit His favor! If we think we are loved and accepted by God because of our strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, we are serving Him out of a wrong heart. And it's dangerous. Because if we believe all our blessings flow because we are obedient from a heart that stacks up points for our side every time we do something good, and God is weighing our goodness against the few small peccadilloes of our waywardness, we will fall apart when things fall apart. I know. I did. Jon is. And Jon's testing God to see if he will still be loved after he goes to the pit, which is where he will end up because God loves him. Jon still needs his Father. But for the rest of his life Jon needs to know that Jesus loves him because He loves him. Because He is good, not because Jon is.
Our love for God is false if it is attached in any way to our own self-righteousness. Once that has been excavated from our souls, we know what it means to love God because He first loved us and gave Himself for us. If I'm counting on things to go well in my life because I merit it with my excellent behavior, Satan has totally set me up to crash and burn. Things will not always go well in anybody's life. Jon's wife chose to leave him. God didn't choose that. In Jon's heart all along has been the desire to break the rules. This gave him the opportunity to do so. The law begs us to break it! If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kind of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead...The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it, killed me (Romans 7). I love the example I heard years ago. The law, rules of faith, demand from us NOT to do something. It's like telling someone NOT to think about a red-faced monkey. Of course, the first thing that enters our minds is a RED-FACED MONKEY! Jesus came to kill that monkey! Dead! And write the rules of His heart onto ours.
The law is flesh. The Spirit makes alive. Our Father, knowing we couldn't keep the law that tells us what we cannot do, gave us His Spirit to teach us what pleases the One Who died for us. We don't follow the Ten Commandments because we want them to make us good enough for God. We follow the precepts of our Father because we love Him for loving us unconditionally. Rules now written on our hearts are "gold, above fine gold." Precious to us in a way we couldn't have understood before we knew God loves us despite our falling short or even in our belief that we don't. But until we are made aware of the fact that we are not rewarded with a problem-free life because we are so right and good, we will be tripped up by the ups and downs of our journey.
Jon's wife is a Christian, too. Messed up by her own emotions, for sure. But God will deal with her. And the pain she's caused Jon is God's to address. When it is "time for the Lord to act" on her betrayal, He will. Maybe when Jon gets out of the way. Looks at his own heart for the reasons he's walked away from his God. The Lord hates false ways. Wants both of these Christians to be children who now long for His salvation from righteousness or from adultery. Each needs its own deliverance.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit...For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed it cannot! Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8 (Italics, mine)
Raised in a Christian home, Jon (not his real name) played by the rules. Didn't drink, smoke or have premarital sex. Married a virgin as a virgin. Believed in following God's statutes and precepts, expecting to receive the blessings of his chastity to the law. But his wife left him for another man. Turned his world upside down. Head spinning, heart crushed, faith destroyed. He'd done it all right and God allowed it all to go to hell. So, if God failed him, Jon, by God, would do whatever felt good. All the things he'd wanted to do but didn't. Sleep around, drink too much and sleep on Sundays when he used to go to church. And in his self-righteous anger, Jon is out to destroy his wife and her new lover. Actively. With great vengeance. Unlike the psalmist, Jon's attitude is, "Your laws have been broken and it's time for me to act because I don't trust You any more to do the right thing!"
Many of us have been raised in the church to trust in our own right living to garner us favor with God. I used to think God loved me because I was such a good little girl. Always wanting to do what He said. Closing my eyes to see God pat me on my little blond head. May I say this? God will dig that out of us if we are His children. It's a completely wrong perception of God's heart. We cannot ever be good enough to merit His favor! If we think we are loved and accepted by God because of our strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, we are serving Him out of a wrong heart. And it's dangerous. Because if we believe all our blessings flow because we are obedient from a heart that stacks up points for our side every time we do something good, and God is weighing our goodness against the few small peccadilloes of our waywardness, we will fall apart when things fall apart. I know. I did. Jon is. And Jon's testing God to see if he will still be loved after he goes to the pit, which is where he will end up because God loves him. Jon still needs his Father. But for the rest of his life Jon needs to know that Jesus loves him because He loves him. Because He is good, not because Jon is.
Our love for God is false if it is attached in any way to our own self-righteousness. Once that has been excavated from our souls, we know what it means to love God because He first loved us and gave Himself for us. If I'm counting on things to go well in my life because I merit it with my excellent behavior, Satan has totally set me up to crash and burn. Things will not always go well in anybody's life. Jon's wife chose to leave him. God didn't choose that. In Jon's heart all along has been the desire to break the rules. This gave him the opportunity to do so. The law begs us to break it! If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kind of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead...The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it, killed me (Romans 7). I love the example I heard years ago. The law, rules of faith, demand from us NOT to do something. It's like telling someone NOT to think about a red-faced monkey. Of course, the first thing that enters our minds is a RED-FACED MONKEY! Jesus came to kill that monkey! Dead! And write the rules of His heart onto ours.
The law is flesh. The Spirit makes alive. Our Father, knowing we couldn't keep the law that tells us what we cannot do, gave us His Spirit to teach us what pleases the One Who died for us. We don't follow the Ten Commandments because we want them to make us good enough for God. We follow the precepts of our Father because we love Him for loving us unconditionally. Rules now written on our hearts are "gold, above fine gold." Precious to us in a way we couldn't have understood before we knew God loves us despite our falling short or even in our belief that we don't. But until we are made aware of the fact that we are not rewarded with a problem-free life because we are so right and good, we will be tripped up by the ups and downs of our journey.
Jon's wife is a Christian, too. Messed up by her own emotions, for sure. But God will deal with her. And the pain she's caused Jon is God's to address. When it is "time for the Lord to act" on her betrayal, He will. Maybe when Jon gets out of the way. Looks at his own heart for the reasons he's walked away from his God. The Lord hates false ways. Wants both of these Christians to be children who now long for His salvation from righteousness or from adultery. Each needs its own deliverance.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit...For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed it cannot! Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8 (Italics, mine)
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