Psalm 119:133 Order my steps in your word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. Order my steps in thy Word. It would seem as if the psalmist were asking God to do what he ought to do for himself. Ordering footsteps, shaping conduct, is a man's own business. But that is to miss the point of the psalmist. He knew well enough that God only works with a man; and that God will order no man's footsteps unless the man is ordering his own. It is not extravagant to see in the psalmist's plea an anticipation of the higher truth of Christianity, that God, as the living God, is actually in his Word, and working its work. God was in Christ, using for the redemption of man his human manifestation. Christ, risen, living, spiritual, is actually in his gospel, as it is proclaimed to men, using it for the carrying out of his redemptive mission. In this we have but the unfolding, the development, of what has been the truth concerning God's Word through all the ages. In whatever form it has come to men, it has been inseparable from God. God has been in it. We are always wrong when we try to make two things - God's Word, and God. The Word is a living thing, and its life is God. Then when the psalmist is most anxiously seeking the counsels of the Word for the guidance of his conduct, with the most resolute intention to shape his conduct by what he discovers to be God's will, he can most sincerely pray the prayer of this text, for God is in the Word, prepared to make all due applications of it, in the life that is freely and fully opened to him. When the genuine man takes God's Word into his mind and heart, he takes God in, and he therefore has not knowledge only, but knowledge and power. He knows what he ought to do; he feels what he wants to do; but beyond and above this, he realizes what he can do. God is no distant Being communicating a rule for his guidance. God is with him, and in him, prepared to order his footsteps, to help him in ordering his footsteps by the rule. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.WEB: Establish my footsteps in your word. Don't let any iniquity have dominion over me. |
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