Category Archives: Holiness

Speaking of Scripture (Psa 119.172)

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My tongue shall speak of thy word:
For all thy commandments are righteousness (Psa 119.172).

When was the last time you had a conversation with anyone, a real exchange of ideas with thoughtful reflection, upon any particular passage of Scripture? I am not asking when you last heard someone else present a Scripture text with an interpretation, but when you and a friend sat for more than one minute and turned a text over and over to examine it this way and that, and to help each other come to a better understanding of it, with its application to life.
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Beloved Truth (Psa 119.163)

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I hate and abhor lying:
but thy law do I love (Psa 119.163).

True religion is a matter of the heart and stirs one’s deepest feelings, arousing both profound detestation and intense approbation and craving for God and his righteousness. Jonathan Edwards made a convincing case for this proposition in his masterful work entitled, “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections.”1 To quote him, “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.”2 Edwards first calls upon 1 Peter 1.8 for supporting testimony, which remarks upon the Christian’s relationship with Christ in this way: “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Intellectual apprehension of truth and consent to it there must be—that is indispensable—but if we remain cold and unmoved with respect to truth and error, if we feel no attraction toward the one and aversion to the other, then we can be very sure that we have experienced nothing or next to nothing of what it means to be a sincere Christian.
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Oh, For More Spiritual Life! (Psa 119.159)

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Consider how I love thy precepts:
Quicken me, O LORD, according to thy lovingkindness (Psa 119.159).

Dead things do not struggle for life, and the unconverted do not sincerely pray for their personal revival. The very hunger and thirst for righteousness, where it exists, is evidence that the craving one shall be filled (Matt 5.6), and that the living Spirit has already begun a good work that he intends to crown with perfect life (Phil 1.6).
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Awakened to God (Psa 119.147-148)

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I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried:
I hoped in thy word.
Mine eyes prevent the night watches,
That I might meditate in thy word.

Laziness is deadly. The Bible’s wisdom literature ridicules this sin with a pathetic caricature of a man so lazy that he lacks the energy and will to pick up the food on his plate! “A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again” (Prov 19.24). Now, we realize that this is an exaggeration in the physical realm for the purpose of shaming us in our sinful laziness, but let us go with it for a moment. Since like everyone else this sluggard must eat to live, a couple things naturally follow. First, he is extremely lazy if even an empty belly will not motivate him to eat. Second, he who stops eating has taken the course that leads to death.
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Saved to Serve (Psa 119.134)

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Deliver me from the oppression of man:
So will I keep thy precepts (Psa 119.134).

The gospel of salvation by free grace is easily twisted by our wealthy, hedonistic culture into a heavenly gift of eternal retirement. When carnal laziness is coupled with the mistaken notion that work is an inherent evil, a part of the misery in this fallen and cursed world, the result is a conception of ultimate blessedness which basically amounts a lavish vacation of good eating with plenty of sleep and fun at God’s expense. It is basically a Western, sanitized version of the eschatological Muslim harem.
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Praying Toward Perfection (Psa 119.133)

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Order my steps in thy word:
And let not any iniquity have dominion over me (Psa 119.133).

The slogan for a certain luxury car is “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” This company is tacitly admitting their cars are not perfect, yet their serious and constant aim is to make them so. If that is their genuine commitment, it is no wonder that their product actually attains a high degree of excellence, and are considered very desirable by consumers.

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Getting Intimate with God (Psa 119.132)

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Look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me,
As thou usest to do unto those that love thy name (Psa 119.132).

God is a holy, glorious, loving, spiritual, and personal Being with deep thoughts, intense feelings, and deliberate plans. Our personhood derives from his, and reflects his. God created us in his image because he designed us, unique among his creatures, for special intimacy with him. He intends us to get close to him, to draw near, to be enveloped in his bosom, to commune with him, as one spiritual being to Another.
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Agreeing with God (Psa 119.128)

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Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right;
And I hate every false way (Psa 119.128).

The psalmist is praising God in prayer, and testifying of his fellowship with God, to the glory of God. Redemption is on display in this, for although the psalmist was a sinner by nature, he is beginning more and more to fulfill the end for which he was created in the first place—to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
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Intensely Righteous Affections (Psa 119.113)

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I hate vain thoughts:
But thy law do I love (Psa 119.113).

Some disrespect is not unusual among evangelicals today for the religion of the Old Testament in comparison with the spirituality of the New Testament. It is often imagined that the experience of Jews back then was not spiritual like that of Christians today, and that the worship of Judaism was almost solely external ritual until the age of the Spirit on Pentecost. Perhaps some today think this way because of a wretched system of Bible interpretation known as Dispensationalism.
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