One of my favorite chapters in the Bible is Psalm 19. It has a lot of encouraging thoughts in it. One of them is this, regarding the law,
(Psa 19:7 KJV) The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
As I was reading it today, I noticed that the verb used at the beginning of the verse in the NASB was “restoring” rather than “converting”. I checked other translations and that seemed to be a common difference. The law gets a lot of bad press. In the New Testament the apostle Paul is regarded by the theologians and their clones as especially anti-law. Not so much king David.
I noticed that here the phrase used is “the law of the Lord”. Often we talk about the “law of Moses”. What we seem to be ignorant of is that most of the time what people are actually talking about is the law of the Pharisees. While the law of the Lord and Moses are probably the same, the law of the Pharisees is a perversion of the original.
The intent of the law was not to bind us in legalism. Re-read the verse above. If you have time go to the 19th Psalm and check it out. The law is there to make life good. It is there to enrich you. It is there to lift you up to new heights. Try to take the word of God in the sense in which it is offered and not the way the theologians tell you what it means.
Being citizens in a country that was established with a belief in the rule of law, and that the rule of law gave us liberty to live our lives, we should be very careful about throwing the law of the Bible out the window. We get our sense of the rule of law because we believe in a God who believes in the rule of law. Of course, both are interpreted and applied with mercy and grace.
Make it so when your life.
homo unius libri
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