Believing in what Jesus did for us on the cross, we became God’s legitimate children and heirs to inherit His Kingdom. The devil does not tolerate our freedom in Christ Jesus and always tries to bind us again with the cords of sin. After luring us to sin, he gives us a feeling of guilt and when that guilt hounds us, he goes to the presence of God and accuses His children of being sinners. The devil leads a believer to forget the forgiveness they receive from God. He does this by misinterpreting the word of God to convince us that God had not forgiven our sins. He made Eve forget that she was made in the image of God and pursued her to eat the forbidden fruit to become one like God. Children of God should not doubt the forgiveness they have received from God in any circumstances.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.

Revelation 12:10

Misinterpretation

Psalm 34 encourages the desperate to come to God by bringing out all the goodness and mercies of God. The below verses comfort the righteous people with the assurance of God’s lifting hand irrespective of their number of falls.

The righteous person may have many troubles,
but the LORD delivers him from them all;
he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.

Psalms 34:19-20

While believers are comforted by this assurance, verse 20 says that the righteous person’s bones will not break. This verse might hurt the feeling of people who have fractures in their bones, and the devil may use this as an opportunity to torment them by telling them that they are sinners. The devil may lead others to judge them as sinners and thereby make them proud that they are righteous as their bones are strong. This kind of pride will face its destiny when they break their bones or experience the bones of someone close to them break.

The Context

In most of the Psalms, when David poured out his agony to God, subsequently God made him speak about the things that were yet to happen during redemption. God told the people to choose an unblemished animal for their sin offering. When God brought His people out of the clutches of Pharaoh, He asked His people to observe the Passover. They were told to kill an unblemished animal and consume its meat without breaking its bone (Exodus 12:46). Similarly, since the day the word of God became flesh and died on the cross, God is asking us to consume His flesh and drink His blood without breaking His bones.

Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

John 19:31-33

God will never change His laws according to His or our convenience. He sacrificed His Lamb for our sins and did not break His legs (John 19:36). The law enforced to the then Israelites is now applied to His children that they should consume the flesh, the word of God, without leaving any remains and drink His blood to have eternal life. When a soldier pierced the side of Jesus, water and blood gushed out. It indicates that the blood remained as water in the body of Jesus as His blood has already flowed into the lives of sinners to give them life again, that too eternal life (1 John 1:7).

On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.

Zechariah 13:1

The Aim

The aim of writing this article is to encourage people who fractured their bones at any stage in their lives that they are not sinners anymore, as an unblemished lamb was sacrificed for their sins two thousand years ago and God did not let even His bones to be broken.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

1 Peter 5:8-9

If we read the above verse carefully, instead of fearing the devil, we are encouraged to know that the devil cannot devour all people, and that is why he is roaming around to find the people who do not know or remember that God forgave them. The above verse leads people to take courage and resist the devil when he distorts the living word.

The Application

When asked not to break the bones of the sacrificed animal during the Passover, He did not ask the lame and bone-fractured people to remain in bondage. He delivered them from slavery irrespective of their physical and spiritual state. Likewise, God did not allow breaking the bones of His Son, yet He welcomes every broken-hearted and not according to the healthy condition of their bones. Fracturing bones is normal during old age, and even athletes and sports people are prone to breaking their bones often. It does not register them in the sinners’ list. During the fracture of our bones, if we lose heart by assuming ourselves as sinners, it indicates that we count ourselves righteous when our bones are healthy. Jesus came to this world to save sinners. The scripture warns us that

if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

1 John 1:8-10

It does not mean that we have to remain sinners, but it implies that whenever God lifts us, we receive maturity, and we will grow in spirituality, and as we grow at every level of our fall, God is willing to lift us to make us whole. It is not we but He who will present us unblemished before His Father.

To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

Jude 1:24-25

Forgetting the interpretation of the devil, if we read Psalm 34 verses 19&20 together, we can find the assurance in verse 19 about the countless mercy of God that lifts us again and again when we fall frequently. The same grace is available to people who often break their bones, that God will heal their fractures and make the bones healthy. The righteousness of Jesus makes us righteous, and for this reason, the scripture tells us that God did not allow the soldiers to break His leg as despite the sins of the world placed on Him, He remained holy and righteous because of His obedience. Hence let us obey God in all walks of life and let the righteousness of Jesus make us righteous.

And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death —
even death on a cross!

Philippians 2:8