Summary
God's Resolution: "I Will Instruct, Teach, and Counsel You"
Tucked into the heart of Psalm 32 is one of the most personal promises in all of Scripture: "I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you" Psalm 32:8. This is a resolution not made by us toward God, but made by God toward us—and unlike our New Year's promises, which so often end in the dust heap of failure, what God resolves to do, He does.
To grasp the full beauty of this promise, it helps to walk through the Psalm in which it sits. Psalm 32 is a penitential psalm, and yet, surprisingly, it opens with happiness: "Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered… in whose spirit there is no deceit" Psalm 32:1-2. David's joy springs from two realities—that the Lord no longer holds his sin against him, and that he no longer has to live the lie. By nature we are good liars, especially to ourselves, downplaying the depth and breadth of our sinfulness. To be freed from that deceit, to confess plainly who we are and hear God's pardon, is one of the great gifts of the Christian life.
Before that joy, however, came something heavier. David recalls, "While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long" Psalm 32:3. Linked closely with Psalm 51, this points back to David's sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. Unconfessed sin, held inside, took a physical toll. Then comes the hand: "For day and night your hand was heavy upon me" Psalm 32:4—the hand of God's law convicting David of his guilt. As Luther knew well, this heaviness is uncomfortable but it is gift. The law moves us out of self-justification and self-defense into self-despair, so that we finally see ourselves rightly in its mirror. Only those who feel the weight of the law can know the sweetness of the gospel; only sinners know their need of a Savior. You cannot understand the magnitude of grace apart from the heaviness of the hand.
This is the setting for God's resolution. He was resolved to redeem us, and He did. The Son of God took on flesh, went to the cross, bore the sin of the world, and rose again, paying a debt we could never pay. In the waters of Baptism He claims us as His own, washing us in the victory of the cross and empty tomb. Redemption means to buy back out of slavery—and that is exactly what Christ has done for those who were in bondage to sin and could not free themselves.
But God's resolutions do not stop at redemption. He is also resolved to bring forth new life in those He has redeemed. Paul asks, "How can we who died to sin go on living in it?" Romans 6:2, and urges, "Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life" Romans 6:13. When we honestly look at the new life Scripture describes and cry out, "Help!"—God goes to work. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" Galatians 2:20. "It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure" Philippians 2:13.
This is precisely what God pledges in Psalm 32:8. Having redeemed us, He commits Himself to instruct, to teach, and to counsel—to keep His eye upon us and keep shaping us into the likeness of Christ. We will not arrive at perfection this side of heaven, but as long as God gives us breath, He will not stop molding His baptized children. That is the hold He has on us, and that is His resolution for you—drawn out richly in "Instruct, Teach, Counsel" 1-10-21.
Video citations
- "Instruct, Teach, Counsel" 1-10-21 — Let's open our Bibles, please, for our study today to Psalm 32, Psalm 32 for our study. We're continuing our series on resolutions, God's resolutions. And in the 30-second Psalm, in verse 8, is a…