📖 Psalm 119 is the longest psalm in the Bible!
❓ What exactly is the law?
🤔 Think of it this way: In Lutheran teaching, there are two main doctrines in Scripture – law and gospel.
📜 In the OT, the Torah of God is the full revealed word and will of God, which is both law and gospel because it is God’s will: not just what God would have us do, but it’s also what he has done for you.
✝️ When we want to understand what God’s law really looks like when it’s perfectly followed, we shouldn’t look to ourselves – we should look at Jesus. He’s the only one who ever lived it perfectly. Then you can actually see that good comes from it.
🌟 The gospel paints a picture of you – not as you are on your own, but as you are through God’s forgiveness, redemption, and love.
🙏 Even though we fall short of the law’s demands, God’s forgiveness makes you more than just the sum of your efforts. Through Jesus’s death and resurrection, you’re made new.
❤️ You are redeemed. Jesus died for you. Jesus forgives you. In this forgiveness, we get to look at the rest of the word of God — even the parts that command us to do this as a gift.
🕯️ The psalmist says that God’s word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
🙌 Praying the 119th psalm helps us appreciate what it is that God would command us to do, to strive for, to model ourselves after, but also the things that we already are because he has made us that way — forgiven, holy, renewed.
✨ Here, we get to confess that the law is a good thing because to want to be near Jesus is to want to be near He who fulfilled it. It’s to want to be near the law.
💫 It’s to say, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Contributor Rev. Harrison Goodman is the Higher Things Content Executive.
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