Everyone Wants to Love Their Life…
Now, I know the rules – never speak in absolutes (whoops, I did it again!) But maybe this is one is true. There are certainly plenty of people who don’t love life, but almost everyone living probably has a desire to love their life. You may have reached a point of dejection or sadness in which you don’t feel that desire much anymore – perhaps you would rather just move through life and feel nothing. No desire, no hope, no longings – just breathing and surviving is enough. But you haven’t always been there. Not every day has been this kind of drudgery. No, once you may have had a desire – and it’s probably still down in there – to love your life. To live life to the fullest in another way of speaking.
In 1 Peter 3, The Apostle Peter is giving some general spiritual instruction to the saints he is writing to. He calls them, starting in verse 8, to have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and humility of mind. He calls them to live a life that is full of forgiveness and blessing, rather than bitterness and retribution. Now, he is getting ready to talk about suffering - but he calls attention to, and points out this blessed life. And then he quotes from Psalm 34. “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good, let him seek peace and pursue it.” In this quote, it seems David here is making a general appeal. “Do you want to love life? Do you want to see good days? Do you have a desire, a longing, even a spark of hope for goodness? Turn from evil! Speak no evil! Seek peace and pursue it!”
In that little snippet of Psalm 34 there is a great nugget of general truth. Goodness follows goodness. If you stay away from evil, stop speaking evil things, seek and pursue peace, then you are much less likely to find yourselves in a bad way. Taken by itself, this is a classic case of “can’t stand the heat? Get out of the kitchen” reasoning. If you would avoid evil, then avoid evil! Sounds so simple, right? But that snippet from Psalm 34 shouldn’t just be taken out of context. Remember, Peter was writing initially to Jewish converts to Christ. When he quoted from Psalm 34, there is a very good chance that they knew the Psalm very well – perhaps they even grew up singing it and had it memorized. So the original audience knew that Peter wasn’t simply saying, “do good things so good things will happen to you.” No, Peter would have known that part of Psalm 34 is lacking without knowledge of the rest of the context.
If you read the rest of Psalm 34 (there’s your homework assignment!) you will realize that David gives this advice, this call to turn from evil and seek goodness, in light of the greater purpose of the Psalm, which is a Psalm of praise. He opens the Psalm with this: “I will bless the Lord at all times! His praise will continually be on my lips!” “My soul boasts in the Lord” he goes on, “O magnify the LORD with me, let us exalt his name together!” David wasn’t writing this Psalm to encourage people to do good for goodness’ sake – he was writing because he knows that good (i.e. loving life, seeing good days, seeking peace and pursuing it) does not exist apart from the good God. In this Psalm, David does give thanks for goodness, but he does it in the context of God’s blessings. God heard his prayer (vs. 6), God answered his prayer (vs. 4), God saved him (vs. 6), the Lord provides all this goodness (vs. 10). And right before the question, “are there any who desire to love life and see good days?” David gives this qualification – he says “I will teach you the fear of the LORD.” That’s the big picture of Psalm 34 – and that is the big picture of loving life and seeing good days. It is a love, a desire, a fear, and praise to the Lord.
That is a far cry from doing “good for goodness’ sake” or some form of Judeo-Christian Karma. While of course it is generally true that if you avoid evil, you will see less of it, there is an emptiness in that pursuit. For in turning from evil, you must turn to something that is not evil. And ultimately a turning to something not evil (i.e. goodness) must be a turning to God; the good God. That’s David’s heart – his thinking about goodness, peace, and seeing good days is fully orbed. Yes, we want goodness, but ultimately there is no goodness apart from the good God. “O taste and see that the LORD is good!” he says in verse 8. God is good. Do you desire Him? Or do you want to find goodness apart from Him?
So we could summarize David’s words, and Peter’s quotation. Rather than simple taking it as a formula of “do good, get good,” or looking at life through the empty lenses of legalism, we should take the whole message and say this: if you want good, you must look to God. You must fear Him, love Him, desire Him, obey Him. There is no good apart from the good God. I think that is where Peter was going also in 1 Peter 3. He goes on to say in verse 15 (and I paraphrase) “when someone asks you about this hope, this goodness, this peace, this love of life that you have, you should honor Christ enough to be able to give them the answer.” The hope within believers doesn't bubble up out of nowhere - it is a hope that comes from the good God. Everyone wants to love life. Everyone wants hope, even if they don’t have it. Christ-follower: you have that hope! Share it! Spread it! Point people, like David did, like Peter did, to the good God. We should say with all conviction, “Do you want a good life? Taste and see that the LORD is good!”
Blessed in Christ,
Pastor Aaron Frost
August 12, 2021
