8 I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.
Reading the words in today’s verse and its context is like eavesdropping on our Lord’s innermost thoughts and His prayer before His Father. In His very private and solemn communion with His Father, He said, “Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:7-8; cf. Hebrews 10:5-10). By the Spirit of prophecy, David has recorded for us those words of our Saviour’s solemn consecration to His Father.
On earth, no one but Christ alone could fulfil all of the Scriptures. During His time on earth, Christ actively and passively fulfilled God’s will. He actively performed everything that the law of God demanded. Not one law did He break. He also fulfilled passively all that was predicted of Him. For example, predictions concerning His birth – the place, the mother, etc. – were fulfilled to the very letter. Only our blessed Lord alone could completely do the will of God, hence His saying, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17).
Christ fulfilled the will of God perfectly in order that He may be the perfect man to substitute us on the cross. He put Himself under the law as an obedient law-keeper, that we who were cursed under the law for our disobedience might have a perfect Redeemer in Him. As Paul commented, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).
As our perfect, blameless Saviour, Christ is also our supreme example. We must follow Him as our pattern in life. Just like our blessed Master, we too must delight ourselves in doing the will of God. Let us remember how Christ has conscientiously performed everything God has required of Him with pure determination and delight. He declared in John 4:34, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” He again said in John 6:38, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” In His agony, He resolved to do the will of His Father and prayed thus: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). May every one of us, like our Saviour, do His work spontaneously and heartily.