let Israel say—
2 they have greatly oppressed me from my youth,
but they have not gained the victory over me.
3 Plowmen have plowed my back
and made their furrows long.
4 But the Lord is righteous;
he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.
Psalm 129: 1-4 (NIV 1984)
Commenting upon this psalm, pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson writes:
"The cornerstone sentence of Psalm 129 is, 'The Lord is righteous', meaning not merely that He is always right (which he is and this, of course, is what the Bible assumes), but that he is always in right relation to us...
"That 'The Lord is righteous' is the reason that Christians can look back over a long life, crisscrossed with cruelties, unannounced tragedies, unexpected setbacks, sufferings, disappointments, depressions - look back across all that and see it as a road of blessing and make a song of what we see. 'Sorely have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me (v 2: RSV). God sticks to His relationship. He establishes a personal relationship with us and stays with it.
"The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment that God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God's faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance."A Long Obedience in the Right Direction (Marshall-Pickering: London, 1989), p 128-9. Slightly edited for brevity and clarity.
HT: Tullian
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