My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word! (Psalm 119:25)
History evidences that the human heart operates out of brokenness. This brokenness results in destructive behavior. It also results in being drawn to brokenness; it’s drawn to affliction. Guilt and shame color every dimension of behavior. It is all consuming to the point that we are drawn to it. We embrace it. We like it.
What happens, then, is that brokenness and disfunction become the norm. This is the reality that the psalmist is describing when he says, “My soul clings to the dust.” The psalmist is talking about the natural human tendency to embrace (“cling to”) that which is poisonous (“dust”) to the human soul.
The apostle Paul has much to say about this in the New Testament. Paul even introduces a term that describes this human state of operating under the domination and slavery to guilt, shame, and death: “flesh”. In Romans 8:6 he says, “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
Paul understood history in a very unique way as a Jew living in the first century. Many first-century Jews believed that history was to be divided into two parts: (1) the age of the flesh, and (2) the age of the spirit. The age of the flesh is understood as the time in which this natural human tendency for evil would dominate individuals, nations, and the world at large. The age of the Spirit, on the other hand, would be an aged marked by deliverance from the age of the flesh. The age of the Spirit is a time in which this “fleshly” state of humanity will be lifted and the natural tendencies of humanity go from being destructive and broken to wholesome, moral, healed, and alive.
This is precisely why Paul exhorts the church not “to set the mind on the flesh”. He goes on to put this in direct contrast with setting “the mind of the Spirit.” What Paul is talking about is the natural mode of existence. At one time, our natural mode is death, destruction, and brokenness. However, because of the cross, because of forgiveness, we can put to death “our old self” and inherit, through the Holy Spirit, a new mode of existence that is centered on love. Through Jesus, we are delivered from the dark shadow of guilt, shame, brokenness and dysfunction that looms over our lives.
Romans 6:6-8 reads this way, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”
While my soul may have, at one point, clung to dust, it has been given life according to the Living Word.