Delight In Your Will (Psalm 40:8)

 

Friday, April 18, 2025

Psalm 40

Genesis 22:1-18

Mark 15:21-41

Observance: Good Friday

Delight In Your Will (Psalm 40:8)

I delight to do your will, O my God;
    your law is within my heart.”

When faced with the horrific tragedy of the cross, we ought to always remind ourselves to ask the question “why?” The cross of Christ is the single defining moment of all human history, and the great revelation of God to humanity.

There is very good reason why Psalm 40 is set as our Psalm for today’s Morning Prayer. This very good reason is explained in Hebrews 10:1-10. There, it says that “when Christ came into the world, he said”, and then quotes Psalm 40:5-7. The words of this Psalm are the words of Christ himself.

We are then taught that it was God’s will that Christ should die on the cross. The reason for this is so that we may be sanctified by his death.

Sanctification is one of those words that like to call “Christianese”. It means “to make holy”, where to be holy is to be set apart from sin for God. Coming back around, then, we realise that the reason why Christ went to the cross is because it was his will that we be set apart from sin.

All of us can look at ourselves and readily acknowledge that none of us are holy as God is holy. We are still on the way. Yet at the same time, this place of holiness is where we are, because the body of Jesus Christ was offered on this day some 2,000 years ago.

Let us then return to the words we read at the beginning of this reflection. Christ says that he delights to do God’s will. It was God’s will that he was crucified, so beaten and bloodied beforehand that he could not even carry the cross to the place of his execution. So cosmic was the nature of his death that the sky went black, the curtain in the temple split in two from top to bottom, and the dead were raised and started walking around. Jesus delighted in this: not the pain and agony of suffering the punishment of our sins, but because of what came after: our sanctification.

What of God’s law do you delight in doing? What of God’s law do you still find difficult to accept? How does the offering of the body of Jesus Christ inspire you to love God’s law more?

God of our salvation, whose law is the delight of all who love you: create in us a deeper affection for our Lord Jesus Christ, that we might grow into our sanctification, and finally by your mercy, be holy as you are holy.