“O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!”
Perhaps we have all wanted something so badly we were aching for it. I remember this feeling when I was growing up in the weeks before Christmas, anticipating the possibility that I might receive some particular gift. Strong desires for certain things probably never leave most people, no matter how old, as long as they remain sharp. What is your greatest wish for yourself right now? What is it that you desire so badly, that you could truly say you are aching for it?
All real Christians, deep down, are aching for righteousness, that is, a conformity of heart and conduct to God’s moral law in Scripture. Another way of saying that is that we want to be like Jesus in every way that we can and should be like Him. Still another description is that this is a desire to perfect communion with God who is love, that we might love Him purely, and love our neighbor unselfishly. The more we experience this moral and spiritual transformation in this life, the happier and more blessed we will be, both now and forever. Is it any wonder, then, that sincere believers crave it?
Real Christians are aching for righteousness.
A CONSUMING DESIRE
This verse is nothing short of an emotional outburst. “O” captures the passionate exclamation of a soul yearning for the object of its desire. This evidence of eternal life and a renewed heart is not merely for forgiveness of sins, or deliverance from punishment, but for obedience to God’s revealed will. A more sensible sinner does not want to be counted guilty before God and liable to hell, and yet apart from regenerating grace he remains a lost sinner still. He has no passion for true reverence, for a life of principled, whole-souled, reckless and radical commitment to keeping God’s commandments! These are marks of one with more than a guilty and fearful conscience and in whom the Holy Spirit has done more than convict and terrify.
Only genuinely born-again Christians crave righteousness, and these alone have Christ’s benediction. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matt 5.6). Hunger and thirst are among the very strongest desires a person can experience. In long sieges against Israel’s walled cities, when the people inside became racked with hunger pains, even delicate young women were driven to eat their own babies (Deut 28.52-57; cf. 2 Kgs 6.28-29)! We rich Americans have never experienced such extreme want in the physical realm, but there is no excuse for being a total stranger to it in the spiritual, for we have suffered a comparable and sustained lack of righteousness.
This yearning for righteousness is both a mark and a duty of all true believers. We are morally bound to desire spiritual growth through the Word like a newborn baby wants milk, but this appeal only works for those who have already tasted that the Lord is gracious (1 Pet 2.2-3). Ordinary unbelievers and hypocrites cannot really relate to this on an emotional level. They have no spiritual appetite.
A HUMBLE CONFESSION
This brief statement is a tacit admission that the psalmist’s ways were not directed to keep God’s statutes, at least in some sense. Evidently he finds this a painful admission as well, but it is one his enlightened conscience is constrained to make.
No one is more ungodly than the one with the highest estimation of his own moral excellence. Such were the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day, and He never rebuked the drunkards and harlots as severely as the self-righteous hypocrites.
A perhaps well-meaning but seriously-wrong strain of doctrine has crept into evangelicalism called Christian perfectionism. Advocated most famously by John Wesley and distinctive of many early Methodists, it advanced the notion that a Christian may in this life, for all intents and purposes, achieve such a great consistency in obedience to God’s moral law that he is said to be “perfected in love.” Whether they intended an absolute and perfect sinlessness or not by such an expression, nevertheless, it was considered a state of stable maturity that identified such Christians as living on another plane than the ordinary believer. We see the same basic heresy today with the concept of “carnal Christians” who are saved and “spiritual Christians” who excel them.
One obvious problem with this theory is that the one who holds it and feels to have attained the lofty ideal can no longer sympathize with the psalmist’s painful and humble confession in this verse. In substance, it is no different from Paul’s lament in Romans 7.14-24, climaxing in his amazing and pathetic exclamation, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” Paul says this not only as a true Christian, but as a very mature, godly, zealous, and committed servant of Christ. He who was one of the most exemplary for his brethren yet expresses his poor self-evaluation of his consistency in keeping God’s law!
A DEVOUT PETITION
Plainly, this pious wish uses the first person and is directed to God Himself. The psalmist envisions a more desirable state of things and then makes his appeal that God by His grace and power would cause it to become reality. Instead of looking within, as if he were self-sufficient, he looks away from Himself, to the same Lord who gave the righteous law, to give also what it was that the law required.
Only the true and biblical gospel conceives of things in this way. Augustine captured the heavenly logic in an unforgettable statement which has thrilled believers through the centuries but caused great consternation to his theological opponents: “Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt” (Confessions, X.29). Augustine knew that the sanctified life pleasing to God was impossible to the natural man, and that only a gracious and miraculous transformation of heart, effected by God, would produce the true righteousness embodied in His perfect law. Because such righteousness is God’s gift, we who ache for it give ourselves to begging it from God in petitionary prayer. Total prayerlessness in this regard is indisputable proof of no desire and hypocrisy, if it coexists with a profession of faith.
A DESPERATE PLEA
The exact nuance of the first Hebrew verb (directed [AV], established [ASV], prepared [lexicons]) is difficult to know for certain, but it all amounts to essentially the same thing. The psalmist is praying for a personal reformation according to the standard of Scripture. He knows that both the desire to do right and the power to accomplish the holy purpose are gifts from God. Jeremiah prayed, “Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God” (Jer 31.18). Paul confessed the same understanding: God is the one who gives repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, so that men may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will (2 Tim 2.24-26), and in the case of believers, “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil 2.13). Even beyond that, persevering in a godly course is utterly dependent upon God’s sustaining grace (2 Tim 1.12; cf. Jude 24).
Friends, have you really known this experience of aching for righteousness? I am not asking you if your desire has had the same intensity as the psalmist filled with the Spirit while writing inspired Scripture, or as Paul the apostle while he set the world on fire with the blazing truth of the gospel, but rather, have you known even a little of this sincere ambition for moral transformation for the glory of God and the praise of Jesus Christ? If so, you have a strong, biblical warrant for assurance of salvation. Otherwise, know for sure that you are lost, a stranger to the new birth.
Even people who have been fundamentally changed and oriented toward righteousness need exhortation to greater desires. You may be complaining in your heart, “But my desire is so slight!” If that displeases you, rejoice! Then let your slight desire wax into a consuming desire, and let it prompt you to make the same humble confession, and let this confession turn into devout petitions to the God who is able to cause your genuine growth in godliness, and as you make these petitions with confidence that God delights to hear and answer them, let your hope of being heard intensify your prayers into a desperate plea that the Lord would remake you into what He intended you to be from the beginning—even a person created in His image, reflecting His own glorious holiness and righteousness, delighting in communion with Him who is the Source of all that is good and lovely.
In other words, take the psalmist’s own simple statement and make it your own, expressed to God from the heart in all sincerity. “O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!” Lord, we will not let You go until You bless us! Amen.