God’s Word for You
Psalm 40:6-8 The Book of the Bible
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, October 4, 2022
6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but you have given me a listening ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.
7 Then I said, “Here I am, I have come;
the Bible written on a scroll tells about me.
8 I delight in doing your will, O my God;
your word is in my heart.”
In Hebrews 10, this passage is quoted from the Greek translation, and the second line of verse 6 says, “a body you have prepared for me” rather than “an ear you have opened for me.” The Greek makes a general application where David makes a more specific one: The Father prepared the Son for special service in his incarnation. The Son remains subordinate to the Father. Here this is shown by his open or listening ear.
This puts the special state of Christ on display for Old Testament believers: God would take on the body of a human man, a body prepared for him by the Father. In that state he would not display the divine majesty at all times, yet he would still possess that majesty. So the Son would become a human being, and he would be human in every sense.
Christ came to be our substitute in two ways, and we need to remind ourselves about this: First, he was our substitute in full human obedience to the Father and to all of God’s will and commands. For this, he had to be fully and truly human. Some readers may have noticed a change in the new hymnal now used by many of our churches, in the second article of the Nicene Creed. Where we were used to saying, “he became fully human,” we now say, “he became truly human.” The word in question is a single past-tense (aorist) verb, enanthropesanta (ἐνανθρωπήσαντα). The concept of “fully” or “truly” is only a matter of interpretation, since the verb simply means “he became human.” It is to be understood, however, that Christ was human in every way. This is evident from the Greek aorist tense, which emphasizes the fact or truth of the act.
The second substitution of Christ was his obedience to death on the cross as the substitute for the punishment of our sins. As August Pieper said: “The Lord permits no guilty person to be guiltless [Nahum 1:3]—in spite of the boundlessness and endlessness of his grace. If he did, he would have to abdicate as God and put the guilty one on his throne. As long as he is God there will be no unpunished sinner. God’s wrath is ultimately every sinner’s death” (“The Glory of the Lord” p. 85). There stands the fact of the crucifixion like a towering statue: Christ died in our place. Christ took the punishment we deserve and received it in his own flesh. “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
In all of his state of obedience, that is, of humiliation, he humbled himself and relinquished glory (John 17:5), divine riches (Matthew 8:20; 2 Corinthians 8:9), omnipotence (Luke 22:42-43 where he was strengthened by an angel), omniscience (Matthew 24:36; John 11:34), omnipresence (Ephesians 1:20; John 11:17), and divine worship (Philippians 2:9-10, where we read that he is to be worshiped first after his exaltation).
In verse 7, David prophetically quotes Christ: “Then I said, “Here I am, I have come; the Bible written on a scroll tells about me.” Now, it is true that “Bible” is a modern word. We take it from the Greek term biblion (βίβλιoν) “book,” which happens to be the translation in the Greek version here for “scroll, book.” Since “the scroll of the book” (megillat-sepher) in question is clearly part of Scripture, I chose to make that more obvious with the translation. The incarnation of Christ and his obedience to the Father are proclaimed here, in this “scroll of the book” or “Book of the Bible,” as we would say.
The humiliation of Christ was necessary for our salvation. His obedience to the Father was his “delight” (verse 8); he did not do what he did for us grudgingly, but willingly, compassionately, and lovingly. He is our Savior, and what bigger word is there than that? He reached down to rescue us, and he did it perfectly.
Many years ago I was a house painter, and I worked for years with my brother. More than once I saw him stretch and strain on tiptoe to reach some distant peak or some nearly impossible corner of a ceiling in a stairwell that could never be touched by any average or above-average painter. But my brother’s athleticism and artistic genius combined time after time to finish a task on time and under budget for the benefit of our boss and of the customer. There was always a chance, though, that the things he did (which would have surprised circus performers) could have gone wrong. It just happens that they never did. This was never the case with Christ. There was never a possibility that Jesus could have failed at his task for our sakes. He is God; the holy and perfect Son of God. He came to rescue us, and he did it with his obedience and with his blood. His resurrection means our own resurrection from the dead. For all of these things we thank and praise him today with our lives just as we will thank and praise him for all eternity in heaven.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.