“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; His mercy [steadfast love, chesed] is everlasting, and His truth [faithfulness, emeth] endures to all generations” (Psalm 100:4-5).
Dear Praying Friends:
Like all the psalms, this one points to Christ. As we saw last week, “steadfast love,” and “truth” appear as a pair often in the Psalter. The New Testament equivalents of chesed are “grace” (charis) and "love" (agape), and emeth is usually translated as “truth.” In the Prologue to the Gospel of John, the apostle writes that when God’s Word became flesh, he manifested divine glory, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
So, we are to thank and praise God at all times, regardless of the circumstances in our personal lives or in the world, because God is good – intrinsically, essentially, and always good – as manifested in his unchanging grace and faithfulness (truth) to us in Jesus.
“For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).
Yours in our Savior’s love,
Wright