Unless thy law had been my delights,
I should have perished in mine affliction (Psa 119.92).
There is only one way that anyone can escape being ground up in the wood chipper of life’s trials now and then thrown into the furnace of divine wrath at the end. It might surprise you to learn that the Bible teaches that the saving way is a way of great pleasure. All those who refuse the saint’s delight in this life must suffer the sinner’s despair in the life to come. God’s righteous fury will kindle upon them in an eternal flame.
Everyone has troubles. Real Christians must suffer even more, not less, than others. God never promised us exemption from our common miserable and human lot of colds and cancer, floods and funerals, unemployment and unfaithfulness, despite false hopes raised by the false prophets of health and wealth. Even Jesus had to endure weakness, weariness, excruciating pain of body, and finally, death. His personal relationships also brought much affliction. He was hunted down like a criminal even in his infancy, despised as public enemy number one when he began teaching as a young man, slandered by religious authorities as if he were the devil himself, betrayed by one of the men in his inmost circle of friends, and abandoned by all the rest. No one has ever died with such undeserved public humiliation and exquisite torture as Jesus! “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow,” the Son of God had said centuries before, through his servant Jeremiah (Lam 1.12). The reason? “The LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.” His was no garden-variety trial and tribulation. It was the Mount Everest of infinitely-justified holy anger against all the sins of those for whom Jesus died; it was Judgment Day thousands of years early for the countless people he would save.
As disciples of Jesus, we are assured that in this life our afflictions will exceed those of ordinary sinners because unlike them, we identify with him. If they hated me, they will also hate you, he said. The servant is not greater than his lord. You must deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow him—if you would follow him at all. If you are not willing to do that, you need to come to grips with the fact that you are only postponing adversity which will be much worse than anything the righteous have ever had to suffer in this life. Yours will be a catastrophe of colossal proportions, an eternal calamity from which no recovery will ever be possible.
Even the earthly trouble alone is enough to make a sensitive soul sink down in despair—except for one thing. God has provided a spiritual tonic that meets the need. Many have access to it but perish anyway, because they do not have faith to pop the cork and imbibe its invigorating sweetness. But some people do. Believers hear the call and respond. They love to tarry long at the wine that Wisdom has mingled, and gorge themselves from her abundant table (Prov 9.1-5). Afterward, they join the swelling chorus inviting others, “O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Psa 34.8). They take up and dispense Solomon’s family counsel, “My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste: so shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off” (Prov 24.13-14).
OUR NEED TO TAKE PLEASURE IN GOD’S WORD
By “need” we mean the lack of something essential, desirable, and useful, but also the only condition under which one might be saved. In this context that is the sense of the word “unless.” In this position, it becomes the introductory part of a conditional sentence. It identifies the only exception that could successfully avert what was bound to happen otherwise.
That condition is here stated as God’s law being the psalmist’s delight. It is a logical “if-then” statement:
If your law had not been my delight,
[then, implied] I would have perished in my affliction.
The same grammatical construction appears in Psa 94.17, “Unless the LORD had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence,” referring to the grave. “The only way I am alive today,” he is says, “is that the LORD was my help, and he saved me.”
Now Christians freely admit that the Lord is the only Savior, but many of them probably consider delighting in God’s Word as an admittedly good option reserved for the select few “spiritual” ones. They think it is certainly not necessary for being a Christian, living passably as a Christian, or going to heaven as a Christian when the end finally comes.
That is why we stress the absolute conditional structure of this verse. The prophet solemnly testifies that IF AND ONLY IF the law had been his delight could he have escaped the destructive power of affliction.
All rights reserved