Love Your Commands

I LOVE YOUR COMMANDS MORE THAN GOLD, MORE THAN PURE GOLD, AND BECAUSE I CONSIDER ALL YOUR PRECEPTS RIGHT, I HATE EVERY WRONG PATH. Psalm 119.127,128.

If you are like me, then you probably have great difficulty in obeying God’s commands! I am slowly learning the truth that ‘the secret of keeping the commandments is to love them’. No one ever taught me that I should ‘love’ the Law not just try to obey it. Similarly, I was not taught to ‘hate’ evil but only to avoid it. Loving the Lord was different. From my childhood, I was brought up by my godly parents and teachers to love the Lord with all my heart.

It was when I read about the Lord Jesus Christ, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness” (Hebrews 1.9) that I began to think about the importance of ‘loving the righteousness of God or loving the Law of God’ and hating wickedness, sin or iniquity. I began to understand that if I want to be like my Lord, then I too must love righteousness and hate sin! In addition, reading Psalm 119 which extols the Law of God in most of its 176 verses and in which David repeatedly tells about his love for the Law, I realised that there is a great need in me to love the Law of God as much as I love God.

I understood that only if I began loving God’s Law could I really hate wickedness. There is a lingering affection and soft spot in me and in all of us for our besetting sins and all sins. That doesn’t mean I like to sin! I hate sinning. Thus there is a two fold problem that I face: I do not ‘love’ God’s Law enough and I do not ‘hate’ sin absolutely! That is a perfect recipe for falling in sin!

The only way I can avoid sin absolutely is by doing what the psalmist David did, “love God’s commands more than gold …and ..hate every wrong path”. I need to be like the Lord Jesus Christ also, “love righteousness and hate wickedness” with all my heart, as I love the LORD GOD.

Has anyone ever told or taught you that you should ‘love God’s commandments and hate sin’? Have you learnt the Ten Commandments of God by heart? How can you love something you do not know? Take time today to learn the commandments. They are found in the book of Exodus chapter 20.

Pray and practise with me: Dear Lord God, help me to learn Your Commandments and keep them always before me. Teach me to love Your Law and hate iniquity with a perfect hatred, like Your Son. In His holy Name. Amen.