17Righteous [is] the LORD in the
all of His ways and loving in the all of His doings.
This verse is, at first glance, very familiar, even cliché. It
would be easy to read it and think, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got that. Check.” I would
suggest, however, the truths expressed are the very foundation of real faith
and we all spend our lifetimes learning to believe and embrace them.
Before attempting to explain what I mean,
there is one exegetical matter that has to be addressed. In the old KJV, the
second half of the verse was translated, “and holy in all His works.” The word
they translated “holy” is not the word we would normally expect to find here.
It is literally an adjective based on one of the Hebrew words for love. The
problem is that the word became used for God’s “loved ones,” which then came to
be something more like His “committed ones.” It could easily morph into His “holy
ones,” expressing His unique people and allowing an occurrence of the basic
word to become “holy.” However, since the word itself simply means love, I
would suggest that is the best translation, unless we had some compelling
reason to select one of the other options.
So we’re talking about the LORD being
righteous and loving. What that means is simply that we can rest assured He is
always right, He always does what’s right, and He is always loving. All He does
is genuinely and very deliberately for our greatest good. It is an easy thing
for all us believers to respond, “Amen! God is good…all the time!”
As long as the sun shines and we are feeling
blessed, it’s all good.
Then the dark clouds roll in, the lightning
strikes, the rain pours down and we find ourselves struggling to see God’s
goodness. If I might suggest, this is almost the very battle of faith itself –
to believe it true, “The Lord is righteous in all His ways and loving in all
His works,” even when life seems to be doing us “dirty!”
Just in the last couple of years there have
been two matters I’ve prayed about, quite sure the Lord would answer, “Yes,”
only for Him to instead answer, “No.” Even as I type these words, I still have
this feeling of disappointment, even confusion. “Why?” I want to ask, “This
makes no sense!” What am I to do? I must go back, read this simple verse and
say, “I will believe this. Although it seems my entire soul wants to shout, ‘No!’
yet with my will I will choose to have faith and believe that somehow the Lord
in His great wisdom knows better than me.”
He, of course, is a whole lot better at
running universes than I am. Like a disappointed child, I just need to be told,
“Father knows best’” and I need to accept that even if in this life it never makes
sense to me.
Actually, it has to be this way, does it
not? We need our God to be 100% righteous and 100% loving…all the time. In
other words, we need a God who will always do what is right. We need a God who
has the wisdom to truly know what is best and the power to make it happen. At
the same time, we need a God of that kind of wisdom and power to also be loving
to us. An earthly king may excel in one to the detriment of the other and in
the end not do us good. But not so
our God.
We can count on Him.
The challenge for us is to learn that and
live by it.
Or, I think more accurately, it is for us to
learning that and trying to live by it. That is what I
meant when I said, “I would suggest, however, the truths expressed are the
very foundation of real faith and we all spend our lifetimes learning to
believe and embrace them.”
May we strive prayerfully and with determination to believe
God has been good in our past (all of our past), that He is doing us good in
our present, and that He will do us good in our future. To believe this is our
faith. To succeed at all is our peace!
Lord, help us!
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