The Righteousness of the Law

Psalm 119:1–16

David uses a variety of words to instruct the reader in the pervasive and comprehensive blessings of God’s gracious revelation: law, testimony, way, word, precepts, statutes, commandments, judgments. These do not refer to different genres of communication but to facets of the probing, convicting, and instructing components of God’s revelation of his intrinsic righteousness to his morally responsible image-bearers.

I. The first eight verses all begin with the Hebrew letter ALEPH.

Some see these verses as describing the blamelessness of the person justified in Christ, clothed in his righteousness. Certainly, the expectation set forth in these verses finds its true and only fulfillment in the work of Christ. But as it stands in the progress of this Psalm, these verses show the expectation that uncompromised blessedness resides in the perfection of obedience to God’s law. God’s law is the expression of the ontological reality that God Himself is righteous and has expressed the way in which human beings may be images of that righteousness. When it becomes clear that perfect obedience is not the present state of being, the true seeker feels remorse and engages in prayer for instruction.

A. Verses 1–4 give a picture of the original expectation for achieving a perfected and immutable righteousness by obedience to divine law.

This law originally consisted of a single prohibition (“do not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden”) and a clear statement of consequence (“In the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die”). The moral law was written on the heart (Romans 1: 20, 21; 2:12–16), and the test of its growing perfection was bound up in this positive command of prohibition. Adam and Eve conversed with the Lord each day and would grow in their moral sense of the dimensions of his righteous beauty accompanied by love for each increase of expanding knowledge.

1. 1. The one whose manner of life consistently conforms to the law will be pronounced as undefiled, blameless. The law will have nothing that it can count as a violation (1).
   2. This law-righteousness involves the uncorrupted adherence of the affections to God’s commands, and his commandments include “testimonies.” As the summary of the law indicates, true love for God and love for neighbor constitute the true fulfillment of the law (“with all [the whole] their heart” -2). When Jesus fulfilled the law and perfected righteousness, he loved even the positive requirement that the Father sent him to finish of dying the just for the unjust, even bearing our sins in his own body on the cross. His obedience with love included the “death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). His distress (Luke 12:49–51) arose from the reality of the constant barrage of sinfulness in the world and among all the people of the world (Luke 13:1–5).
   3. That these verses are setting forth the requirement of unwavering and constant obedience as the substance of righteousness is emphasized in the phrase (3), “They also do no unrighteousness.” Nothing either in action, attitude, or motivation compromises the pure righteousness of the train of obedience of the person who pursues a blameless walk in the law of the Lord. “They walk in his ways.” For sure, observing the “ways” of Jesus constitutes a law to be followed, a principle of righteousness derived from his manner of obedience to the Father. “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, … for even Christ did not please himself” (Romans 15:2, 3).
   4. Verse four shows that God’s law induces a moral frame of mind and inflames zeal for their application to everything in life. The law implies precepts, that is, one may reason from the law to its consistent application and see such a precept as included in the law. For example, the confusion about Jesus’ resurrection revealed a sinful resistance to what Jesus had told the disciples, a heart disinclined even to hear and process his language on the many times he told them (Luke 9:21, 22; 44, 45; 18:31–34). After it happened, Jesus told two disciples, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24: 25, 26). The words of Jesus, though not a command, should have produced a happy conviction that Jesus, the penalty-payer, would overcome death and leave the grave.

B. Verses 5–8 initiate the lament caused by disobedience and a recognition of dependence on the Lord for resuscitation of a sense of the goodness of the law.

Paul’s exposition of the law in Romans 7 expands the principles set forth by David.

1. 1. The person who loves the law but understands that he falls short of its absolute perfection knows that he needs even clearer direction and divine power to fix his determination for obedience (“to keep”). He desires this to be so—“O, that my ways may be established.” As Paul wrote, “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man” (Romans 7:22).
   2. When the law showed him that he was under a sentence of death, he was brought to shame and confusion. Sin, through what is good and holy, was producing death and brought the writer to shame (6a; Romans 7:13). Now that the threat of condemnation has been answered, he sees God’s statutes and commandments as the path to honor God. After the death and resurrection of Christ, we learn with even greater depth how the righteousness of sanctification is instilled into our lives by the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead because of his perfected righteousness.
   3. The righteous judgments of God, ever expanding under the tutelage of the Spirit, cause our hearts to give thanks to God. God’s righteous judgments were present from the first day of sin in Genesis and culminate in the death of Christ. The desire for “uprightness of heart” increases apace as God’s mercy and truth kiss each other in the cross.
   4. The psalmist recognizes that his desire to keep the commandments is an operation of God’s presence with him. Old Testament believers possessed the Spirit as an indwelling power, but the body of revealed truth and prophetic fulfillment was greatly diminished compared to Christians after the resurrection and then again, Christians who have the advantage of a completed canon including not only the narratives of Christ and his teachings, but the doctrines and ethical/spiritual instructions of the apostolic writings.

II. The next letter, BETH, gives an analysis of sanctification as the statutes and judgments of God define and align the life of the recovered worshipper of the Lord.

A. After the law brings conviction and presses us to redemption, it sends forth its light for purity of heart.

The law, which so recently became an instrument of death in light of sin (Romans 7:9–12), functioned for justification in the hands of Christ and now works for sanctification under the power of the Spirit (Romans 8:1–7). Sin kills by the law’s uncompromising call for righteousness; the Spirit makes one holy by the law’s uncompromising call for righteousness. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:1).

1. 1. The word of God expressed as his expectation for righteousness from the heart fuels heavenly purity (9). A young man’s (or old man’s or woman’s) way is their consistent manner of life. The life driven by God’s word and its moral principles and its picture of perfect righteousness in Christ moves in every dimension toward the kind of purity that constitutes heaven in the presence of God.
   2. The intensity of desiring God (“With all my heart”) in the context of a struggle with indwelling sin and our proneness to wander captures the concern of the Psalmist in this verse (10). Our work in earnestness gives conviction that God must provide the strength and energy. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12, 13). The Psalmist, David, goes to the source for strength—the Giver of life, strength, and commandments, the Lord Himself—in the midst or moral weakness,. David, like Paul, saw “another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:23). Robert Robinson wrote, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.” When David wrote, “With all my heart I have sought you,” he anticipated Paul’s statements, “I agree with the law that it is good. … To will is present with me. … the good that I will to do; … the one who wills to do good. … I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. …With my mind I myself serve the law of God” (Romans 7:16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25). When he wrote, “Do not let me wander,” he anticipated God’s remedy through Christ and the gifts that he brings: “Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25).
   3. David reiterates the irreducible necessity of the word of God for the reflection of godliness that he desires (11). God’s word pictures his infinite righteousness as well as his expectations of righteousness for his people. Sin has so blinded our moral eyes that the law written on the heart is shuttered and manipulated to our own ends. The revealed truth, set up in unchangeable words, stands as a consistent witness of God’s moral character and delineates the nature of righteous, gracious, merciful, and humble responses to others as we seek to reflect his communicable attributes. “Thy word have I treasured and stored up in my heart to help me avoid sinning against you.” Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by your truth: your word is truth” (John 17:17).
   4. When we view the blessedness of the Lord, the triune God, in his infinite sufficiency, perfection of love, and overflow of praiseworthiness that induced him to create all things, including all rational beings, both angels and men, and set his image upon the human race, we know that we must be involved in an eternal learning curve. We must learn the inexhaustible loveliness of his holiness, and the essential unity that exists through love in the three persons of the Trinity. The prayer, “Teach me your statutes” (12) is a plea for passage into God’s own blessedness, an expressed desire for increasing knowledge of those attributes that constitute God’s praiseworthiness.

B. The perfection and beauty of God’s moral character and his revelation of it calls for proclamation, joy, meditation, and admiration.

1. 1. Now that David has sought earnestly to be taught, to know, and to store up the word, he expresses his desire to communicate it (13). He wants to tell, to declare, to speak these rules and ordinances for they give us knowledge of God and direct our lives in true worship. Paul taught that through proclamation of God’s truth we move toward unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, and even to increasing Christlikeness (Ephesians 4:13).
   2. Joy and delight come from receiving the testimonies of God (14). God, in his word, describes his way with the world, its creation, its present sustenance, its radical purging, and its eventual newness free from the effects of the fall. He gives testimony about the fall of Adam, the promises of redemption and the Redeemer, the providences among men and nations that sustained the revealed hope, and the humble coming of this Redeemer, his own Eternal Son. He gives testimony of the lives of those who initially proclaimed this gospel, its success, its opposition, and its transforming power. God’s testimonies fascinate the mind, exhilarate the heart, secure the sinner’s hope, sanctify the corrupt, and enrich the soul; they are the pearl of great price.
   3. Searching out the implications of God’s precepts gives guidance for every event of life (15). Meditation on the revealed principles given by God, those ways in which his laws operate in all human relations, as well as the ongoing conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil, disciplines us to regard God’s ways in every situation. We develop what may be called a biblical worldview, a rubric to be discerning about all that the world sets before us. We have consistent regard for and fix our eyes on the way of eternal life. “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish” (Psalm 1:5).
   4. So absorbing, transforming, and salubrious is God’s revelation of the way of righteousness, that the one who meditates on it also delights in it. Paul discovered this even in the internal conflict with the principle of flesh that remained in him (and in all the saved): “I delight in the law of God in my inner being” (Romans 7:22).

III. A Summary of some of these Principles

A. God has given his law to be obeyed and enjoyed.

B. A true worshipper desires to walk in righteousness.

C. God’s righteousness should provoke praise.

D. The Law presses us to justification in Christ and gives content to our sanctification by the Spirit.

POEM

If we had a love uncorrupted by the Fall,
God’s law would be our pleasure.
In it His beauty shines and captivates our all,
His glory made our treasure.

Were our obedience complete, we’d bear no shame;
Our hearts beat undivided.
Straight steps in perfect goodness, leave us without blame;
Our every joy provided.

Learn His commands and praise Him with an upright heart.
Then you walk in purity.
Respect his laws and from his statutes don’t depart,
This is your security.

To mind, to heart, to lips, to feet, Your law my guide.
Let righteousness surround me.
Where precepts chasten and instruct, let me reside.
Severe mercies astound me.

The word of God revealed to sinners shows great grace;
He tells us of salvation.
To hear His word and by His Spirit truth embrace
Gives heaven’s exaltation.

Believe the word in mind and soul.
Receive the word to make you whole.
Relieve your conscience of all fear.
Perceive the truth, God’s grace is near
Conceive the law as righteousness.
Retrieve through Christ true blessedness.