I will sing of your love and justice;
    to you, Lord, I will sing praise.
I will be careful to lead a blameless life—
    when will you come to me?

Psalm 101:1-2a

At first this may seem to be quite simple, but look closely and you’ll see a hidden complexity that often confounds people. In the first line, we read of singing of God’s love and justice; an interesting combination. Consider for a moment His great and amazing love, so boundless, so unconditional. His love is so great that He was willing to do amazing things that we might be redeemed from our sins against Him. Yes indeed, contemplating God’s love is something we like to do. Yet in this line, we are singing of His love and justice.

Sometimes we think of justice as fairness, and that is true enough, yet we must admit that it is a little incomplete, for justice is more than just fairness because when most people apply fairness to themselves, it ends up meaning whatever they want at the moment, forgetting all about what is fair to the other person. If we consider the totality of our sin against God, what is just or fair about redemption?

Nothing, nothing at all, and that is why it is called grace.

Now we can see why singing of God’s love and justice together results in praise. Of course, when we see that God’s love resulted in His paying the price for our sin to satisfy His justice, resulting in grace, we sing praises, but the next line shows how we respond to His grace; we endeavor to lead blameless lives. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? We’ve received grace, so great was God’s love for us, so why wouldn’t we resolve to do the best we can to live lives that are pleasing to Him? This isn’t because of any rule or regulation, but it is the natural expression of our love and gratitude.

In the last line, David asked a question that we have the answer to, for He has come and He has left us with His Spirit by whom we can come into His presence any time we like; how is it that we should delay another moment entering into His presence with confidence and joy in our hearts to give Him the thanks and praise He has coming?