I Love Your Law

While I was walking this morning my mind kept coming back to the Ten Commandments and how I loved to meditate upon them. As I have been studying the Commandments these past few weeks I began to understand what the Psalmist meant when he said, "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.” (Psalm 119:97)
Now I know that the Law does not bring me salvation or make me holy but the Law does show me the majesty and the holiness of my God. As I meditate upon the Law I marvel at His majestic grace that when I realize that I cannot live up to the Law He reaches down in grace and declares that I have been made righteous by the blood of His Son that was shed on the cross.
A few years ago I wrote the following as I was studying Psalm 119 and I had come to verse ninety seven.

The Psalmist refers to the Scriptures by many different names. One of the common names that he uses is “The Law”. The Oxford English dictionary says that it is a rule or a system of rules that regulate the members of society. Another definition is that it relates to “the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present.”

I think that both definitions could apply to the Word of God. It is a system of rules that govern society. Many codes of law have been based upon the Ten Commandments that are given to us in the Word of God. If society would follow the commandments that relate to how we live with each other we would need less policemen and everyone would feel much more secure.

However, the Word of God is also very much like the scientific laws. Scientific laws are unchanging according to society whims and fancies. Even in a lawless society the scientific laws cannot be broken. The Law of God is much like that. You cannot break the law as much as you can be broken by it. One cannot defy the law of gravity and if one tries to by stepping out of a high rise window one is likely to be broken by the law. The only way one can defy the law of gravity is if another law is in place, a higher law, such as the law of aerodynamics. It is the same with God’s law. The only way that we can be kept from being broken by the law is that there is a higher law, the law of grace.

It is not common for a person to love the law if they are a law breaker but if they are obedient to the law they will love it because it protects them. Traffic laws keep us from chaos on the highways. We lived for a year in a society that didn’t obey the traffic laws and driving our car in that society was always an adventure. We were so grateful to return to our homeland where people had respect for the law.

The law was never meant to be a burden. It was meant to free us. The Law of God is not a burden but a way to our freedom. I am grateful for the law and I have learned to love the law as the Psalmist did.