Righteous judgments

Psalm 119:7
I will praise You with uprightness of heart, when I learn Your righteous judgments.

I think there is some confusion about God’s righteous judgements.  Some people believe that God’s righteous judgements will be eventually seen when He makes His triumphal return as Jesus Christ, King of kings.  Others see God’s righteous judgements as what happened to the world in the time of Noah or what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.  

While these are righteous judgements made by God, they don’t give the learner (in this case you and me) a sense of uprightness or right standing with God.  In fact, I would say that they do the opposite.

When I hear about God’s destruction of two cities for their sin or His flooding of the entire earth because of sin, it doesn’t make me feel like praising Him.  It makes me afraid of God; I become fearful of what He could do to me because of my sin.  After all, He is holy and just and I am sinful by nature.  Regardless of how hard I try to be good and do the right thing, I still fail.

Also, wouldn’t it stand to reason that feeling good about God’s destruction in wrath of a city would make me prideful?  It would be as though I thought I was better than them.  I saw their punishment and I can praise God for His destruction of the wicked.  This doesn’t sound very Christ-like, so I’m going with the assumption that it’s wrong.

The truth is God’s ultimate righteous judgements were carried out and borne in the perfect body of Jesus Christ.  It was on His back that Christ bore our sicknesses and diseases, a curse for our inability to obey the Law.  It was on the cross that Christ bore the fullness of a Holy Father’s wrath as God turned His back on His Son and set His face on all mankind.

When you, me, or David learn about God’s righteous judgements, when we learn about His forever grace, we are given a reason to praise His name.  When we understand that Jesus bore the full wrath of God so that we won’t see any of His anger, and we come to the knowledge that God isn’t mad at us because He exhausted His anger in Jesus, we can feel uplifted.  When we understand that Christ has taken our sin and imparted to us His righteousness, we can rest assured that we are in a right standing with the Father.

It is because of Jesus that we’re able to praise God.  It was because David had an understanding of grace that he was able to praise God.  That’s something to sing about!