Justin Appel

'O how I love your law!'
- Psalm 119:97

Dear Friends in Christ,

I must confess that I often feel ambivalence toward this statement from Psalm 119 — a psalm which I began to memorize as a child, at the prompting of my mother. Do I really love God’s law? Do I want to meditate on it ‘day and night’ — as Psalm 1 says?

If I recognize some internal confusion about these passages (or indeed, all of Psalm 119!), it is probably due to a fairly binary notion of ‘God’s law’ that I inherited from my broader Protestant, and indeed Western Christian, background.

Essentially, this idea paints God as a demanding judge who proscribes long lists of rules and regulations, which taken together form ‘God’s law’: a comprehensive code of conduct against which I will be judged in the next life. A poor performance would lead to condemnation (read ‘hell’), while keeping the rules results in vindication (read ‘heaven’).

In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that God’s grace often sounded like a welcome relief from a situation that sounded like automatic failure. Grace was necessary to shield me from God’s judgement, because it was literally impossible for me to follow God’s law satisfactorily.

But what if this heavily juridical idea failed to capture the holistic richness of the situation? What if ‘God’s law’ is essentially a glimpse into the potent loving nature of God? What if this ‘law’ shows us a restorative  — albeit a cleansing — path to healing? What if this ‘law’ is a way of life by which I actively participate in God’s love, and become everything that God intends me to become?

This essentially therapeutic model of God’s law is consonant with a traditional Christian understanding of God’s love as restorative, cleansing, generous, and self-sacrificial. It recognizes the possibility (and necessity) of inner transformation in us, God’s creatures, because grace will change us when we are open to God. The law is not only a point of measurement against which we will all ultimately fail, but rather a blueprint for life lived according to God’s love.

Of course, this Christian way is not easy! Change means repentance, humility, and disciplined action — every day of our lives. The saints are very clear about the necessity of such work, so we should not doubt it for a moment.

However, we needn’t fear the difficult path either. If we embrace this Christian way, this life lived in love of God and neighbor, then God’s grace will flow to us and change us into the person he designed us to become.

I take great consolation in the thought that I simply need to keep walking on the Way -- submitting, repenting, struggling -- and that God's grace will bring about the inner transformation I need.

When we walk on this Way, God’s law can become a joy to us, and we can pray earnestly with the psalmist in this fully biblical language:

‘Blessed are you, O Lord. Teach me your statutes!’
‘Blessed are you, O Master. Make me to understand your statutes!’
‘Blessed are you, O Holy One. Enlighten me by your statutes!’

Yours in Christ,
Justin