Converting the Soul

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul (Psalms 19:7)

The Psalmist declares the law of the Lord to be complete, sufficient and adequate, converting the soul. It is perfect to manifest one’s guilt. It is perfect to bring one face to face with the ultimate Judge. It is perfect to shut one’s prideful boast. It is perfect to turn one against his existential error. It is perfect to bring one to the end of himself.

Everyone who runs into the law is not converted but there is no one converted that did not run into the law. No one comes to Christ on the upbeat; to the contrary, the sinner comes abused, broken, confused, degraded, and empty from the consequences of sin. And those consequences are the hand of God executing His law. What law? The soul that sins shall surely die. What law? The wages of sin is death. Who killed the man who jumps off the building, it is God: God’s own judicial determination in the unmovable law of gravity. And it is the same God that orders the consequential turmoil, trauma, or tragedy that is essential to every conversion.

Conversion means to be freed from ideas or doubts that bound one to a false course – to repent. Unconverted Peter asserted at the Mount of Olives, “Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.” Yet only hours later, warming at the fire, the consequential denial of Peter’s presumptuous arrogance broke him. Why – Because god has a certain law for pride. Paul employs it when instructing Timothy, “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.”

There are those who would say that the law is done away with. They would say it is grace today not law. What an error! For if there is no law there can be no grace. O but moreover, if there is no law there is no God. For God is the law; He is himself the standard; He is holiness itself. Thus the law is immutable, immovable, and irresistible. The law was not created the law was revealed. And what is revealed “is always”; and the only thing that “is always” is God. John states it aptly, “ …And the word was God.”

And the story of every Christian is that he ran into God’s law. God would not let us be comfortable in our sin. He would not let us find peace or contentment. Law penalized our sin until we came to the end of it. Law freed us from what we love when its pain was manifest beyond our desire for the wrong itself. …And we were freed, freed from thinking the bad is good; freed from believing that such death is life; freed to hear God’s voice; freed to receive the gospel; freed to know His love; freed to know his mercy and grace. Elsewhere the Psalmist says, “The entrance of thy words giveth light.” The hymnologist, said “I once was blind but now I see.”