Righteousness & Justice

Series: Life is Good

Scripture: Psalm 33:5 NIV

God’s love is one of the most difficult concepts to fully understand and therefore teach.

Think about it…what can we compare God’s love to on earth? We cannot compare it to earthly parents or teachers, because they fail. Scripture tells us all have sinned.

We could compare God’s love to a parent, but not all parents are loving and kind all the time. We could try to compare God’s love to a dog, or cat or a horse but those can fail us as well. My old dog is loving but when he is tired he really wants to be left alone. Because he wants to be left alone so he can rest, he curls up in a ball and finds a quiet place where he can sleep.

Ultimately there is nothing that compares to the love of God that is constant and always reliable. God is always reliable without fail.

In Psalm 33:5 we are told, “The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”

The wording of Psalm 33:5 is interesting. The literal translation in Bible Hub from the Hebrew says “He loves righteousness and justice the goodness of Yahweh is full of the Earth.”

I would argue because the final Hebrew word is Earth without stipulating ‘of the’ could also be translated ‘in’ earth.

My reasoning is this…Yahweh, being full of the Earth puts the emphasis on the Earth. If we say, the love of God is in the earth it puts the emphasis on God’s love IN us and God’s love in earth.

Not only is God’s love around us, it really is in us. Gods love in the Earth, and around the Earth, and through the Earth makes more sense.

In addition to that God’s love IN us is the creator of righteousness and justice.

I’m not sure why (and papers upon papers have been written about it) humans seem to gravitate toward trying to earn God’s love. We try to be good. We try to do the right thing but we fail we fail, we fail. When we fail, we can have a tendency to punish ourselves for our failure.

If we were taught we need to be good some children might translate that to being good so we will deserve God’s love.

Consider what would happen if we taught children irrevocably God‘s love is all around us. What if we taught that God’s Love IN us helps us.

The ultimate goal is for adults and children to rely on God for love.

Ultimately, we need to remember we do not earn God’s love. God loves us and will always love us.

God loves us, in and all around us. God’s love is in the earth.

Years ago some wise person once said to me, “I’m pretty sure God is God and God is in charge, you are not.”

I was young and at the time I took it as criticism but I was wrong. The real gist of it is that I don’t have to be in charge of the universe because God has it all covered!

Because God has it all covered I can relax and rest in the arms of a loving God.

Deborah

acrazyjourney.com