by Angus Harley

Psalm 119 is the confession of a man of faith, of love. He is not viewing God’s Mosaic Law, or any other law or commandments of God, as a list of demands that must be slavishly observed and ‘kept’. The entirety of the Law (Pentateuch) and Prophets (rest of OT) demonstrated the key principles of love to God and love to one’s neighbor.

In regard to the Law of Moses itself, it is not about the outward ‘form’ called ‘the Law’ and keeping its 612 commandments. It is about what that Law was pointing toward. Only the man of faith and love could see what the external, physical, legalistic, Law was pointing toward- and it was not to the Law and its own physical, legal, this-world, fleshly, standard.

Psalm 51 is the perfect example of the difference in interpretive value that faith and love bring when examining the Mosaic Law, a Law that belonged to, and was the essence of, an external, physical covenant, the Old Covenant. Notice how David, in a true confession of sin and in his song of spiritual praise, uses highly evocative Mosaic, cultic, imagery, but this is employed in a completely spiritual, non-Mosaic, manner to describe God’s way of spiritual cleansing of David’s heart from sin. David then confirms that the Mosaic cultic Law in itself, as to its own physical nature, has no innate spiritual value, when he says that God does not require literal sacrifices! It is only after all of David’s spiritual confession using Mosaic-like imagery to depict spiritual forgiveness, only after true spiritual reconciliation and cleansing, that David then- and only then- ends with referring to the physical walls of Jerusalem and offering material sacrifices in a literal, Mosaic fashion.

Put another way, the order is love and faith using the Mosaic Law and the Old Covenant system and its priorities as a kind of mirror of spiritual, everlasting, realities. The Mosaic Law had no value in itself, for it was a physical Law, written on stone, that could perform no spiritual task. But faith and love use that Law as a mirror of the greater, of the true, of the spiritual, to aid them in their walk with God.

When the Law was used in that way- and that way alone- it was a magnificent tool for the Jewish true believers and lovers of God to use whilst operating ‘under the Law’. Thanks be to God that we are not ‘under the Law’, but have the substance that was behind the shadow, the reality, not a model- the NT Scriptures, Jesus Christ and his heavenly sacrifice, and the New Covenant ‘law’ of the commandments of faith and love that characterize God’s heavenly people. Hallelujah!