Bible Commentaries

Psalm 3:3

"But you, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts my head high." Psalm 3:3

If your soul has ever been favored with a taste of mercy, with a sip of the brook by the way; if ever your conscience has felt the application of atoning blood, or the love of God has ever been shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit, when the law comes to curse you, endeavor always to bear in mind that the Lord Jesus Christ stands as the shield between you and its curse. The law has therefore nothing to do with you who believe, it has cursed Jesus Christ for you; as the Apostle declares, "He was made a curse for us;" and again, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree." Therefore the law has nothing to do with you who believe in Christ Jesus. He has intercepted the curse for you, and, by receiving it into his own body and soul, bore it harmless away from you.

It is a blessed act of faith when you can thus take Christ in your arms and hold him up as a shield between the law and your conscience. And this the Apostle seems to hint at in a measure when he says, "Above all, taking the shield of faith, with which you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one;" for many of these fiery darts are taken from the law. It is indeed a great and special act of faith thus to take Jesus Christ in the arms, and holding him up in the face of the law, to be able to say, "Law, you have nothing to do with me; Jesus has fulfilled all your righteous demands, and endured all your tremendous curses. He is my shield, to protect me from your condemning sentence; and all your curses are harmless; they all fall short of me, because they all fell wholly upon him."

I say this is a special act of faith, because we cannot do it except as divinely enabled. Otherwise, it would be but an act of presumption. I may add, also, that it is a very rare thing to be enabled so to take Christ and hold him up as a shield against the curses of the law; but when done under the influences and operations of the blessed Spirit, it is an act of faith which God approves of and honors. Nor is there any other shield to intercept its tremendous curse.