“The Lord rewarded me for doing right; he restored me because of my innocence. For I have kept the ways of the Lord; I have not turned from my God to follow evil. I have followed all his regulations; I have never abandoned his decrees. I am blameless before God; I have kept myself from sin. The Lord rewarded me for doing right. He has seen my innocence.”
Psalm 18:20-24 NLT
David was in a good place when he wrote these verses. He recorded how God had blessed him, with words such as “reward”, ”restored”, “innocence”, and “blameless”, and David was sure that he had not followed evil ways and he had “kept [himself] from sin”. He was also feeling good because he had “followed all [of God’s] regulations” and had “never abandoned His decrees”. But is that reality or wishful thinking? Looking at David’s life as recorded in the Bible, there were times when his claims of being blameless were true, but another time when he broke several commandments all at the same time (read the account of David and Bathsheba). David flip-flopped through his life much as we do, with the human predisposition to sin emerging from time to time, taking us away from God’s protective shield.
But Paul had a different perspective, as we read in Romans 3:23, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard”. In David’s times there was a legalistic regime in place under the Old Covenant, where people could claim to be righteous if they followed all the rules and regulations laid down by God to Moses. But in what we call the New Covenant, we read (Romans 3:24), “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins”. We pilgrims know all about God’s grace with the wonderful divine exchange of Jesus’ righteousness for our sins. David claimed to be blameless through his adherence to God’s “regulations” and “decrees”. We pilgrims are blameless because of Jesus.
Dear Father God. I don’t know where we would be if it wasn’t for Your Son Jesus. Expressing our gratitude doesn’t even scratch the surface of what You deserve. We can only bow before You in worship. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 