Boundary Lines

      "Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." - Psalm 16:5-6

      Recently, I have thought often about these verses, which I memorized in a Bible study years ago. At the time, the youth leader hosting the study was excited about the verses, and I thought they were poetic and lovely, but even though I knew I ought to, I was not able to identify with that point of view.

      The human heart naturally rebels against God's design for the world and rejects His decrees, but in Christ, we become new creatures and our hearts of stone are replaced with hearts of flesh – through the work of the Holy Spirit, we come to know and love God in a meaningful, deep way that surpasses intellectual assent or a guilt complex. We learn to genuinely delight in God and His order for the world. At the time that I memorized this passage, I was a new creation and I did desire to follow God, but I did not yet feel the kind of love and satisfaction which led the psalmist to write like that.

      It was impossible for me to manufacture that kind of vital, life-shaping faith. I felt guilty for not being good enough and frustrated with the sense of distance I felt between me and God. In part because of this youth leader, I learned that what I was missing: a full, practical understanding of the gospel. I knew that our acceptance into heaven was based on grace alone, but I operated day-to-day with a works-based mindset and thought I had to live up to a standard before God could accept me.

      Now, I understand that the gospel means I am not merely forgiven for eternity, but am forgiven in the moment, and when God looks at me, He sees the goodness of Christ, not my sin. This exchange makes me free to love and know God without the sense of distance or the feeling that I must maintain goodness before I have any just standing before him. Now, instead of viewing his commands as a daunting, discouraging standard I can never live up to, I can take pleasure in the boundary lines and see how good God is to protect and instruct us.

      The psalms are full of exclamations over how delightful and pure the commandments of God are, and when I was younger, even though I could cognitively assent that they were good, I could not relate to that kind of enthusiasm. Now, because my relationship to God is much more defining to me, I can take pleasure in the boundary lines and delight in the way God's commands display His goodness. His order for the world is better by far than anything a human could conjure, and when we follow God's guidelines for life, we are not fighting to gain acceptance by ascribing to rules, but are living out of the knowledge that we are known, loved, and accepted by the Creator whose character defines the universe.