Festooning Psalm 103

My dear soul,

    praise the Lord, this God!
May we always remember
    what a blessing he is!

You forgive!
You heal!
You redeem!
You crown me!
You satisfy!
I am so satisfied, so full, so energized,
    I could fly!

You see me among the oppressed,
    those wandering like sheep with no shepherd.
I need you to work for my good
    and to make me good.
That is what you showed Moses so long ago
    and what you always show your people.
Yes, that goodness comes from your heart,
    so gentle and kind,
    so hard to get angry
      because you love me do dearly.

Lord, I do not deserve it,

    but you don't accuse or hold a grudge,
    or treat me like I treat others,
      how I treat you.
It's just who you are,
    completely accepting and embracing
    whoever seeks you out,
    throwing out my sins
      never to be seen again,
    treating me like a long-lost son
      so passionate because I am yours,
      so gentle because you could easily blow me away.

I don't  have long here, Lord,
    and I won't really be remembered.
    I'm just like stubble blown from a field.
So I will have to trust your love -
    your never-ending love -
    to keep me around,
    to make things right for my children
      and their children, and on and on,
    to make good your good promises to me,
    to remind me of the joy of doing it your way,
      the right way.

Your good ways are firmly set so near me
    and as far as I'll ever go.
They will always be over and above
    every other plan or rule I can see.

Bless you, my good Lord!
King of angels!
Commander of all forces!
Creator and Owner of the universe!
Bless you!

Oh, bless him, my dear soul,
    who sees even you.

How Jesus and Paul Loved the Law

What has been the effect of antinomian Christianity on spiritual formation?

Antinomian Christianity is Christianity which is lived “against the law.” In this view we are not only made right (justified) with God apart from the law, we are made right by avoiding disciplined action according to the law. “It amounts to rejecting [the law] entirely except in so far as it may be done to you by God, passively.”1

With such a relationship to the law, antinomian Christianity has a spiritual formation without any form. Such Christianity must rely on “grace as formless spurts of permissiveness that thrust the law aside.”2 Without the form of the law to guide and structure our spirituality, we are left with a grace that merely allows disobedience and empty living. The formation of our spirit is not based on the revelation of God’s guidance for all of life, but on emaciated superstitions that reduce life with God to mere service to humanity, a “get-out-of-hell-free” card, or a really good worship service show.

Why did Paul “love” the law? (Note Romans 7:22)

Paul loved the law because it made him “conscious of sin” (Ro. 3:22), his great enemy which sought to enslave him to “impurity and ever-increasing wickedness.” (6:19-20) He loved the law which was so “holy, righteous, and good” (7:12) that sin wanted to deceive him and make “the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually [bring] death.” (7:1-0-11) The law helped Paul to see and know sin as his great enemy bent on deceiving and killing him. The law also explained, taught, and illustrated a life of willing “slavery” to God in “true righteousness and holiness” (Ep. 2:24), the very essence of eternal living of a life like God’s. (Ro. 6:23)

Why is the law so important even today?

Sin is still our greatest enemy and we are in need of guidance and teaching more than ever. With the loss of the knowledge of morality in favor of a vague sympathy for morality, we find ourselves cut adrift, “infants [in knowledge], tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.” (Ep. 4:14) We are more afraid of law than of sin, more afraid of guilt than of wrongdoing. So, we find ourselves unable to grow in grace and have called such stagnancy the inevitable cost of being fallen human beings. Our world and our lives look quite pagan, without hope and without God (Ep.2:12). The law supports us and can bring hope and God’s presence through a grace that actually brings knowledge and overcomes sin.

How do law and grace go together?

The law is direction and guidance, which is a grace in itself, but it is not complete. The law points to the fullness of grace found only in Jesus. As Dallas Willard said, “The law is the course of rightness, not the source of rightness.” When law is taken as ultimate in our life with God (“The Bible says it, so I will do it!”), we find our willpower is insufficient to keep the law, so “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Ro. 7:15) This is because our will is no match for sin coming at us in obsessive desires. (vv. 18-20) When the law is not ultimate, but subordinate to the grace through Jesus in his abiding Spirit, it becomes a powerful ally, able to not only identify sin, but able to bring new desires that overcome sin from a new nature operating in and around us.

Why is the law so important to the soul and its restoration?

More and more we are finding that recovery of physical function after injury must include the right kind of activity and effort of the affected areas. Apathy makes injuries much harder to heal or even permanent. Similarly, our souls cannot heal without the right kind of effort in their injured and fragmented areas. “The law was given as an essential meeting place between God and human beings in covenant relationship with him, where the sincere heart would be received, instructed, and enabled by God to walk in his ways.”3 This “meeting place” is one where delighting in the law will bring integration and healing to the soul by God’s grace supplied by Jesus, our Teacher. The efforts to delight in the law may seem small and indirect, but will help the soul as nothing else can. Where there is healing and help for the soul, God’s kind of life flows through our life and our being making what is impossible for any person possible with God.

____________________________________________________________________________

1Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 213). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

2Ibid, 215.

3Ibid, 212.