No Broken Bones

on assurance

In Psalm 34:19-20, we read these words: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.”

Now there is a sense in which, if these words are taken literally in a wooden way, they are absurd. Plenty of righteous people have had their bones broken. Being righteous does not magically transform one’s skeleton into adamantium.

So there are a couple of ways to think about these lines, then. One is to say that no one is truly righteous (which is of course true, as we see in Romans 3:9-18), at least not by their own virtue, and that’s why so many of us end up in casts. Fair enough.

The other option is to fall back on the fact that this psalm is a poem; that is, the line should be taken to communicate a literal truth, but that the line itself should not be taken woodenly (e.g., when a player steals second base during a baseball game, we don’t mean he picked up the base plate and ran away with it illegally – we mean he ran from first to second base successfully on his own during the pitch). In this case, we might say something like, “God is telling us that he generally keeps and preserves the righteous.” Also a fair option.

But there is a third option that, I think, makes the best sense of the line and tells us something comforting and reassuring about our status before God.

Not One of His Bones Will Be Broken

When Jesus was dying on the cross, we are told not one of his bones was broken. Now that little factoid is significant, because Jesus is our great Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7): he is the Lamb of God who is sacrificed for us so that our sins might be taken away (John 1:29) – and when the passover lambs were offered, none of their bones could be broken (Exodus 12:46). That’s why John’s Gospel makes this comment when the Roman soldier pierces Jesus’s side with a spear rather than breaking his legs with a mallet, “For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “‘Not one of his bones will be broken’” (John 19:36).

Now Jesus is the pre-eminent Righteous Man. Indeed, he is the only one who is perfectly righteous, and he clothes those who trust him with his own righteousness. It is this imputed righteousness (which gives us a right standing before God) which makes possible any moral righteousness and right actions on our part; in other words, by faith, we can please God (cf. Hebrews 11:6). We can die to sin and live to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). Are we tracking so far?

So, let’s now put the pieces together. Literally speaking, not a one of Christ’s physical, incarnate bones were broken. But that truth is of more than physiological significance, because spiritually, to trust in Christ and be given his righteousness is to be united to Christ by faith: which means we are members, bones, organs in his body, because we are his body. “Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior” (Ephesians 5:25). Christ nourishes and cherishes us “because we are members of his body” (Ephesians 5:30, emphasis mine).

We Will Not Be Broken

What does this mean for you and me? It means that, if our trust is in Jesus, not a one of us will ultimately be broken. If we are truly united to Christ our Head, we may be pressed, beaten, struck, bloodied and bruised -- but we cannot be broken, we will not be lost, we shall not be destroyed (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

Christ cherishes his own body; he is not a self-flagellating ascetic who fails to properly nourish his body. Put another way, though we may be hounded and even counted as so many sheep for the slaughter, there is nothing in the universe that can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (cf. Romans 8:35-39).

Now can individual local churches fade away? Indeed they can: that’s why Jesus warns the churches in Revelation 2-3 that their lampstands can be removed. But the individual believer who is truly united to Christ cannot not be lost, even though their churches can be: because even though a particular local church might be smashed, no individual bone in the body of Christ is ever broken.

Now of course, we run into trouble when we try to determine the secret decree of God and know exactly who really is a part of Christ’s body. We are not given such x-ray vision. To change the image, we are given to see the fruit of a life; but we cannot see beneath the soil to know whether it is good soil or not.

There are those who can be grafted into the vine by means of covenant inclusion (e.g., baptism, verbal profession of faith, etc.) but who are cut out because they actually do not have a living, abiding union with the vine (John 15:6; cf. Hebrews 6:4-6). To quote Paul again, not all who are descended from Israel truly belong to Israel (Romans 9:6). What we can know is whether or not someone professes faith in Christ, and whether their conduct and speech aligns with that profession.

But if you look to Christ alone to be made right with God, and seek to please him, and strive for the holiness without which no one will see God – well, then you can have the blessed assurance that, though your afflictions may be many, the Lord will ultimately deliver you out of them all, and that you will not be broken: for God delivered his Righteous Son out of his afflictions, and not one of his bones will be broken. And you are a member of his unbreakable body.

Photo by Umanoide on Unsplash