Let my heart be sound in thy statutes;
That I be not ashamed (Psa 119.80).
A recent study shows that compared to 1975, today’s high school seniors consistently think they are doing very well and have bright prospects for the future, while their actual performance on objective tests of academic achievement is considerably lower. They are proud failures! This is comparable to being high on drugs and feeling very artistic while you cannot draw a straight line.
I am afraid that this divorce between self-respect and performance has carried over into the spiritual realm, and things are perhaps even worse than before. “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Prov 30.12). They think they are Christians but they are mistaken. They may even judge themselves to be quite committed Christians, but they have not understood the ABC’s of biblical spirituality.
We often see this self-deceiver in the spiritual church, exhibiting a full and clean profession to his fellow-men; while himself—awful thought!—living at an infinite distance from God. He has got notions of the grand doctrines of the gospel and he finds it convenient to profess them. Salvation by free grace is his creed, and he will contend earnestly for its purest simplicity. He conceives himself to distinguish accurately between sound and unscriptural doctrine. He deems it legal to search for inward evidences, lest they should obscure the glorious freeness of the gospel. All this is a cover for his slumbering delusion.1
Ours is a time of rampant antinomianism in the church. J. I. Packer’s summary analysis is superb:
Antinomianism, which means being “anti-law,” is a name for several views that have denied that God’s law in Scripture should directly control the Christian’s life.
Spirit-centered antinomianism puts such trust in the Holy Spirit’s inward prompting as to deny any need to be taught by the law how to live. Freedom from the law as a way of salvation is assumed to bring with it freedom from the law as a guide to conduct.
Christ-centered antinomianism argues that God sees no sin in believers, because they are in Christ, who kept the law for them, and therefore what they actually do makes no difference, provided that they keep believing.
Dispensational antinomianism holds that keeping the moral law is at no stage necessary for Christians, since we live under a dispensation of grace, not of law.
Situationist antinomianism says that a motive and intention of love is all that God now requires of Christians, and the commands of the Decalogue and other ethical parts of Scripture, for all that they are ascribed to God directly, are mere rules of thumb for loving, rules that love may at any time disregard.
It must be stressed that the moral law, as crystallized in the Decalogue and opened up in the ethical teaching of both Testaments, is one coherent law, given to be a code of practice for God’s people in every age. In addition, repentance means resolving henceforth to seek God’s help in keeping that law. The Spirit is given to empower law-keeping and make us more and more like Christ, the archetypal law-keeper. . . . Scripture holds out no hope of salvation for any who, whatever their profession of faith, do not seek to turn from sin to righteousness.2
Any kind of antinomianism is utterly foreign to the godly psalmist’s perspective. This text brings that out forcefully, for it links one’s relationship to God’s law with a consequent experience of either honor or humiliation.
CHRISTIAN INTEGRITY
“Let my heart be sound in thy statutes;” or, “may my heart be blameless in your statutes” (ESV).
First, note that this is a spiritual blessing sought by prayer to the Almighty and gracious God. No amount of human willpower or resolve can produce it. Genuine sanctification is one of heaven’s choicest gifts, while we remain responsible to possess it, since God offers it freely for the asking of any earnest seeker (Luke 11.13; cf. Ezek 18.31; Psa 51.10; Matt 23.26; Acts 3.19; Rom 12.2; Jas 4.8; etc.). We will really grow in sanctification through devotion to earnest and believing prayer for it.
Observe, second, that true godliness exists from the inside out; it is first a matter of the heart or soul, the inner self that directs all our actions. “Sound” means healthy or well; “blameless” refers to observable, consistent integrity, the same Hebrew word appearing in 119.1, “Blessed are the undefiled [mg., perfect, sincere] in the way, who walk [habitual course or manner of life] in the law of the LORD.” David is not at all unconcerned about deeds, but he centers his petition upon his secret, invisible part. True worship and service to God flows from a renewed and healthy soul. We affirm this without denying that we can engage in external actions which, with God’s blessing, become effectual means of grace to the soul. There is a symbiosis3 between godly deeds and a godly frame of heart.
Third, he prays for conformity of heart, and by implication of his entire life, to the written will of God in Scripture, his “statutes,” the Hebrew original meaning “what the divine Lawgiver has laid down.”4
It is evangelical righteousness, not legalism, for a Christian to maintain a strong desire for his comprehensive, consistent, whole-souled obedience to the entire biblical revelation of God’s moral law, 1) if aiming for God’s glory not his own, 2) with humble trust in God’s gracious justification of sinners in Christ, not his own obedience to Scripture as any part of the grounds of his acceptance with God, and 3) with reliance upon God’s strength not his own.
The first trait makes this struggle for biblical obedience itself an act of worship to God the Father; soli Deo gloria! We who profess faith bear his name before others, and our sanctification commends him to others. The second trait glorifies the God the Son who accomplished once-for-all redemption for his chosen people. The third magnifies the ministry of God the Holy Spirit as absolutely necessary for any subjective progress in conformity to his law.
CHRISTIAN HONOR
While a desire for God’s glory is to be supreme in all we do, a subordinate wish to avoid humiliation is completely legitimate as a motive to holiness.
The psalmist pleads for real sanctification in order “that I be not ashamed” or “put to shame” (ESV), that is, humiliated on account of the chasm between the faith I profess and the faith I actually possess and practice. The English word “integrity” comes from the Latin “integritat” meaning “entire;” it is literally, “the quality or state of being complete or undivided,” and relevant to our meaning here, “firm adherence to a code of moral values.”5 Because God cares about your whole person and holds his creatures to a righteous standard, only those will ultimately be honored who actually are righteous inside and out; i.e., they are not two-faced hypocrites. Only God’s obedient servants truly honor him, and he has said, “Them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed” (1 Sam 2.30).
When the day of grace is over, the Lord will make this announcement: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” And even now Christ proclaims, “And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” And woe to us if we do not sufficiently take into account the solemn benediction, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” of the New Jerusalem (from Rev 22.11-14).
Clearly, there is a divinely-ordained link between Christian integrity (internal and external obedience to God’s commandments) and Christian honor (commendation and salvation on Judgment Day). Knowing the connection prompted the psalmist to write, “O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments” (119.5-6).
Grace is not God’s forgiving us freely and dispensing with any obligation that we should keep his law. Grace is God’s forgiving us freely and transforming us by his Spirit so that we can more and more fulfill our moral duty to love and walk in his commandments, a blessedness we never could have possessed apart from God’s election, Christ’s redemption, and the Spirit’s enabling. You must be a sincere follower of the Lord Jesus Christ to have any reasonable expectation that you will be saved, because the gospel produces Spirit-filled people obeying God’s moral law (Rom 8.3-4).
Thus, gospel grace is seen in that both Christian integrity and its consequent honor are gifts from Christ to his beloved people. May he grant them abundantly to us. Amen.
Notes:
1. Charles Bridges on Prov 30.12.
2. Excerpts from “Antinomianism” in Concise Theology.
3. Literally, a cooperative relationship between two living things.
4. ESV Study Bible, “Terms in Psalm 119 for God’s Covenant Revelation.”
5. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
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