Vows

We were reading in Bible class recently about Jonah and how he was ready, after being in the great fish, to fulfill his vows. Roger brought up the connection to Psalm 116 which we sing in the offertory: I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people. What are those vows anyway?

We so often think of vows as my promises of what I will do (with the Holy Spirit's help, of course).

Pastor asked us, instead, to think of vows as confessions of faith. In baptism when we renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways, when we make a vow that we will hold to the faith in the Creed, these are not ideas that I come up with about what I will do. Rather, it is the New Man of faith in me --Christ in me-- who desires these things. And since I am in Christ, and He is in me, and I trust in Him, and He has joined me to Himself, therefore I will of course confess the truth. So my vows are not made because of arm-twisting, or because I have been conquered, or because I am showing off my piety. But my vows are made because I am agreeing that what God says/wants is true and good.