Sufficiency of Scripture
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them Your servant is warned, And in keeping them there is great reward. (Ps 19:7–11)
The Law of the Lord is perfect, Converting the soul — The Law of the Lord refers to the Scriptures. They are perfect. In the Bible the various words translated into the English word perfect means something like mature, lacking in error, fully completed, sufficient (enough, adequate, plenty, amply, abundant, plenty). This means that the Scriptures are absolutely true, whole…perfect.
The soul is the person of the person. When the Bible talks about the soul it talks about the person. This includes the body. There are times when the body is spoken of separately (cf. Heb 4:12; 1 Thes 5:23), as if it were part of someone else, but this is literary reasons, not essence reason. If a person were to lose her body, she would be dead. If she were to lose her spirit, she would be dead. If she were to lose her soul, she would be dead. When the scripture, here, refers to the soul, it is referring to the whole person.
Converted means changed. The Scriptures change the person. They change him from being self-centered to being God-centered. They change him from living for himself to living for his creator. They change him from loving “stuff” to loving the Lord Jesus.
Many think this is as far as it goes. But loving God means obeying God, and this means doing what he said, which begins with loving our neighbors. Loving our neighbors starts with our closest neighbors which are the people living in our homes. So, converting the soul means changing us into people who love our wives and respect our husbands. It converts us into child lovers (including unborn children). Having our souls converted means having our whole lives converted. There isn’t any areas of our lives that aren’t touched in a transforming way by the Law of God.
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple — A testimony is a story, a depiction, a representation. In this case, the testimony is from the Lord about the Lord. It is his story about himself and about our selves. And it is sure. It is right. We know what we know about ourselves and about him because he’s told us. More than that, we know about anything and everything because he has told about them in the Bible. What he’s said is sure, right, true, fact, and absolute.
Wisdom is applied knowledge. In the Bible, wisdom includes knowledge. In other words, someone who doesn’t know can’t have wisdom and someone who does know doesn’t necessarily have wisdom. And true wisdom isn’t the kind of applied knowledge that someone who has been around awhile has. True wisdom is a deeper kind of understanding that only comes from the Word of God. Bible wisdom measures and defines the other kind of wisdom. It sits in judgement on it. When someone wise in the ways of the world, apart from the Bible, says something that most people think sounds wise, the person who has Biblical wisdom can/should listen and evaluate the truth or error of the statement based on the wisdom that comes from Scripture. Biblical truth is true, non-Biblical truth might be or might not be. But we only know because Biblical wisdom comes from the testimony of the Lord.
How do we get this wisdom? The text says the Scripture make the simple wise. Being simple doesn’t mean that a person has a diminished mental capacity, it means he don’t have wisdom. It means he is empty, he doesn’t know. So, the text says that the testimony of the Lord transforms the simple person, the ignorant person, into a wise person.
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart—The statutes of the Lord, another way of saying the Bible is right. I think it is a very cool thing that joy and right are tied together here. Joy is an emotion that comes when we know we are exactly where we ought to be. It comes when we know that God is involved in our lives, or better, that we’re involved in his life exactly like he wants us to be, and it is good. And this knowledge that produces joy, comes as we read, understand, and apply the statutes of the Lord. And this can only happen because they are right, true, solid, accurate, and good.
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes—Purity means clean, without fault, or error. It means the commandment of the Lord is without bias, error, or confused motives. God is totally self-interested, but he is loving, kind, and good. Consequently, his commandments are good because they are pure. He isn’t doing a job on us. He isn’t conning us. He isn’t getting anything out of being kind to us other than that he gets glory.
Enlightening the eyes means that God is in the special kind of cosmetics business. No, I’m kidding. It means that the Bible allows us to see things that we might not otherwise notice. When we get new glasses, we see things we missed before. When our outlook on life is clouded by the concerns of the world or of our own self-interests (our sin), our observations are skewed. We don’t see anything accurately. When God comes into our lives and he gives us his commands, and as we apply those commands, we begin to see life through his eyes, from his perspective and we are lite up. We see new things in new ways.
These new things in new ways are things related to loving/worshipping God. Righteousness, holiness, loving, kindness, peace, joy, and all the rest take on new meaning and new life. We come to realize that all of life is spiritual because it is all lived in front of the God who loves us.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever—the fear of the Lord is not necessarily a terror kind of fear, though I think it often should be. In fact, if our meeting face to face with God didn’t produce a little bit of holy terror, I wonder if we actually met him. But what the text is talking about here is the abject, godly, and holy reverence that that terror combined with his kindness produces in us. This fear is clean. It has no pretense, no self-ish-ness. We are totally poured out and emptied in the presence of the Lord.
And this presence, fear, emptiedness, and consequent fullness begins in this life and ends in eternity. Once we know God, or are known by him, and fall on our faces before him, we are clean, our lives are clean, and we experience this cleansing forever and ever.
The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether—what God says is right is right. What God says is wrong is wrong. When God makes a pronouncement about anything on any subject, he is right and our opinion, if it differs from his, is wrong. In our culture we have lifted our emotions to be the judge and measure of what is fact and what is false. But when God makes a pronouncement, it really doesn’t matter how we feel about it. His word is fact, and his view is absolute. Anything that disagrees, no matter how it feels, is wrong. It is sinful.
More to be desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb—The Law, testimony, statues, commandments, fear, judgements of the Lord are to be desired more than anything else in the world. It doesn’t matter how much happiness money, fame, glory, glamor, etc. pretend to promise us, the Word of God is the only thing that will produce joy in our lives.
It just occurred to me how few people really have the riches that we all think we are seeking. We seek after glory, respect, love, kindness, satisfaction, peace, ease, and all the rest, maybe getting it for short periods of time, but mostly not at all, but when God, the creator of the universe holds it out to us as a free gift, we push it away and say, like a 2-year-old, “I do it.”
Moreover by them Your servant is warned, And in keeping them there is great reward—In addition to giving us great gifts, the Scriptures also warn us and protect us. For some reason when we hear about being warned, we often think of it in negative terms. We often think of someone saying something like, “I’m warning you…” and it always means they don’t want us to do something we want to do. And this is sadly, too often true of the way many view the commands in the Bible. A lot of women simply aren’t going to submit to their husbands and a lot of men simply aren’t going to put any extra work into not frustrating their children. When they are told that they are in serious danger of Hell for that rebellion they flip it all on its head and make it sound like the warning and the person presenting the warning are the problem. But warnings, especially warnings that come from God are for our good. They are more like the warning you see on a dark and rainy night that says, “bridge out ahead.” No one says, “Damn authoritative nosy bodies. Always telling me what to do.” No. They appreciate knowing that the bridge is out.
God’s warnings are like this, Yo! The bridge is out! If you don’t go a different direction, you’re going to plunge into the abyss for eternity!” He’s warning you, not because he’s trying to ruin your fun, but because your fun is about to kill you. And he loves you.
And just as when you turn your car around and go back to your friends house for more fun (because the bridge is out and what else are you going to do?), obeying God will always result in great reward.
And this is why I practice Biblical Counseling.