Thy Word Is a Light for My Path

A familiar passage from Psalms is 119:105.  "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path."  The psalmist takes delight in the words of God.  But there’s more to the words of God than simply knowing them or hearing about them.  You’ve got to do the law, live by the law, perform the law.  This was Paul’s comments regarding Israel in Romans 2.  In verse 17 the Jews were bragging about their relationship with God.  Verse 18, they knew his will.  In verse 19, they considered themselves guides for the blind.  N.T. Wright says Israel thought they were good simply because they had the law, but they did not keep the law.  That’s why Paul says in Romans 2:24 that “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”  Israel, the Jews, were not keeping the law, even though they knew it and had possession of it.

There’s more to the delights of the law as in Psalm 119 than just knowing what it says.  In Jeremiah 31:33, God says this - “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD.  "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God, and they will be my people.”  The law is no longer to be simply written down, but it becomes a part of a person, as it resides in their minds, and in their hearts.  Paul says something like this in 2 Corinthians 3:3 – “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”  The law is no longer being written down on paper or stone, like the 10 Commandments, but it is residing in people.  Paul tells the Corinthians that they themselves are a letter (as in written correspondence).

And this leads me to a comparison of the passage from Psalms about God’s word being a light.  Jesus in the sermon on the mount also addresses light.  In Matthew 5:14 he tells his listeners that “you are the light of the world.”  What was once written down on paper or stone is now lived out in people’s lives.  Right after he says this, Jesus says in verse 17 - "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."  Fulfilling the law will mean not having it written down, but having it lived out in people's lives.  Jesus’ fulfillment goes a step beyond words and paper and delighting in them as the psalmist says.  Jesus’ fulfillment is lived out in the lives of his people.  In this way, we don’t replace the law or do away with the law.  Instead we fulfill it.  We bring it to a next level glory.

So, God’s word is a light for our path.  And we are to be God’s word in that we are the light of the world.  We are the word of God when we light up the world around us.  And in so doing, we don’t nullify the light of the law, but we actually live it out.