Psalm 119:80 – Blameless
Let my heart be steadfast in your statutes
so I will not be put to shame.
If you immerse yourself in this Psalm, you’ll lose any sense of boastfulness and self-sufficiency. There are claims before God to being a commandment keeper, but they are well-balanced by those passages that ask the Lord to accomplish this work. There is praise of God’s self-revelation in his instructions (Torah). There is gratefulness for God’s work. There is also reliance on God for everything.
A verse-by-verse meditation, such as I am doing, has its own hazards. It is very easy, and not entirely contrary to my purpose, to discuss things that are far from the particular verse, yet my mind was started in that direction.
As I read this I can think of any number of doctrinal discussions that one might launch from right here. But I think this verse expresses the heart of the psalmist quite well.
I have noted before that using the word “law” as a translation of the Hebrew torah is misleading. We think of “law” as a collection of commands. But as indicated by the name, torah is much more than law. Yes, there is a focus on the laws contained there, but there is also the story of God’s action with regards to God’s people. We hear about call,, choice, and going back further, creation.
It’s easy for people who have an adversarial view of rules to misread this focus on law as automatically legalism, dry legalism, even. It’s possible for someone to separate the legal portion, statutes, from the rest and use them unhelpfully. This is not a mistake our psalmist makes. In the broad story of torah we have the God who creates, who chooses, who calls, who protects and guides, who rescues, who instructs, and yes, who makes rules.
The rules are the innermost part of this structure. They’re a burden taken out of their natural environment. They’re a burden when asked to accomplish something they are not designed to do. But torah seen properly is the message of that creator, guide, protector, savior, teacher, and lawgiver.
I’m not rejecting the teaching in Christianity that the law cannot save. The law does not make you holy. In soteriology, the law functions to tell you you’re not making it. But when in Christ, when inside those important protective layers, the law becomes different.
I hear the psalmist saying that he would like to be identified by a wholehearted pursuit of God’s statutes. That is his prayer. That is his hope. That is the way he can avoid shame. His identity is God’s person, whom God is making anew. One might recall the words of Psalm 51:12, “Create in me a clean heart …” That’s the creator doing in you what he has done everywhere.
What is your identity? Whose are you?
(Featured image was generated by Jetpack AI and slightly enhanced with Photoshop.)
