Psalm 119:174 – Delight

I long for your salvation, LORD,
and your instruction is my delight.

Salvation is a word with varied meanings. One can be saved from a simple misstep by some good advice. One can be saved from death by a rescuer. One can be saved from poverty by some job training and the offer of a good job. Or, as we often use the term in Christianity, one can be “saved,” meaning that they’re going to heaven.

This last, very common usage of the term is rarely the primary meaning in scripture. Yes, scripture talks about going to heaven, about the resurrection and about new life, but this is not isolated from other things. We can become children of God, but being God’s children is itself an experience of change and growth.

I often think about the kingdom of heaven as simply God making the Divine presence manifest in the entire universe. If you are ready for that, it’s heaven. If not, it’s hell. Let me be clear that this is a way of thinking, and not a proposal about how reality actually works.

Still, in scripture, becoming more like God in holiness is always a part of the package. God’s salvation, and delighting in God’s instruction go right together. God has never had a plan that didn’t involve making a holy people.

It’s important for us to pay attention to the combination of the divine empowerment with human thought and action. Note that I do not mean that salvation is a shared effort, in which the human person contributes part of the power. This is because we start at zero, with every ability we have as a divine gift.

Wesleyans talk about prevenient grace. What is that? It is simply God’s grace that goes before everything else. You don’t delight in God’s law on your own. That too is God’s gift. You don’t long for God’s salvation on your own. That longing is prevenient grace in action.

We long for many things along the way, for salvation from physical dangers, from poverty, and from disease. But all these things are the small and limited examples of salvation that prepare us for, and help us to understand the ultimate salvation which is to have the full divine image restored in us.

When we long for God’s salvation and take delight in God’s instruction, it is two different ways of looking at the whole. We long to reach the destination and we rejoice in the content, in what that destination means.

Is that longing and that delight driving you today?