Life Equals Righteousness

Hey everyone! Sorry, both Joslyn and I have not been able to post in a while, but here’s another topic for today!

The author of Psalm 119 talks so much about learning the Word and being pure because of it, but verse 40 hits right on point with all of it. It says, “How I long for your precepts! Give me life through your righteousness.” It’s so crazy now days to think about longing for precepts, or commandments, the way the author did. Specifically because so many people are ashamed of not being able to follow the law they are supposed to, so they stray from wishing to have the laws in place for them. But the author knows that he has failed. Straight up failed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have written “Give me life through your righteousness.”

The reason he says this is because he knows his own righteousness will not give him life, and he knows he needs a Savior to BE his righteousness, because without his Savior he is as good as dead. Think about that! Even though he didn’t say he was just a failure, he clearly knew he couldn’t possibly have any righteousness from obeying the law to give him life, so he leans on God. Just like we should do! We have Jesus for crying out loud! Jesus is our Word of Life, and we should long to have him in our hearts. The Psalmist simply shows us that we cannot be righteous ourselves...we need to trust God to be our righteousness. Otherwise we will never know the life he meant for us to live.