Saturday, July 18, 2009

Psalm 45 - Grace is poured upon Your lips

AELW 10:215-216

"Grace is poured upon Your lips. Experience has made this clear and continues to do so. For when Christ and the apostles preached invisible and incomprehensible things, which eye has not seen, etc., and for the sake of these ordered people to despise all visible things, good as well as evil, they would never have prevailed if there had not been an attracting grace in their word. Not so Moses or any human lawgiver. For they commanded only temporal things, and if they had commanded invisible things, they would never have been persuasive, because there would not be grace but rather indignation and wrath on their lips. Therefore here too, the prophet said: "My tongue is the pen of a writer." For the tongue of Moses was not such a pen when he spoke the letter. Therefore, when he urged something absent, future, or difficult upon the Jews in the wilderness, such as taking the enemies by storm or eating of meats, etc., there was no grace on his lips, because they were not moved except by the bare word. But in the new law my tongue, he says, which speaks spirit and whose speech is the utterance of the heart, is always covered with grace. For wherever the Word of the Spirit is preached, it is not preached without result. For "grace is poured upon Your lips." Therefore, a distinction must be made here: The lips of Christ transcend personal ones."

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