Job 34:33 Should it be according to your mind? he will recompense it, whether you refuse, or whether you choose; and not I… The theology of Job's friends was, that success waits on a right character and sorrow attends a wrong one. With this theology, if a man has sorrow, misfortune, and pain, it is certain his character is amiss. Like many other of later times, they never once thought of revising their theology when they found it did not fit the facts. They take a short cut; they revise the facts. The fact is, that the good are not free from suffering, and the bad are not given up to it. Becoming a Christian does not exempt a person from trial, or give him what he wants. He can have what he wants, if he wants what God wants him to have; He can have his way if his way is God's way. To become Christians is, in general, to give up our plans to Him, our will to His. Religion is self-surrender. What is the freedom of the will? Freedom is not an absolute but a relative term. There is no such thing as unqualified freedom. Freedom of the will does not mean freedom from all restraints; it does not mean licence; but freedom "from some particular kind of restraint or inducement to which other beings are subject." Freedom is nor freedom from the influence of motives, but freedom to make choice of motives. Man's will is subject to motives. Here is what we mean when we speak of forming a character, To form a character is to induce a probability that a man under given conditions will act in a manner which can be foreseen. Man can see where he is weak, and when he sees a motive coming to assail him which he thinks too strong for him, he can interpose another to shut out the first. The education of a man is for a man to come under the controlling influence of certain motives; a right education is to come under the easy and permanent control of the best motives. We see, then, that not the man most obedient to determined motives is the slave, but he whose conduct can be the least foreseen. The slave is one who is subject to the impulse of the moment, given over to the whim and caprice of any passion that may strike him. The strong man, the free man, the large, hopeful, intelligent, brave man, is he who has made the most perfect surrender to the best motives. We have the paradox, striking but true, that the man who possesses this freedom of will in its most valuable form is the one whose will is the most nearly a slave to the best motives, and who therefore obeys them easily and without rebellion. It comes to this, that when we speak of religion as being self-surrender to God, we mean that human freedom consists in the frank, conscious, total, irreversible, glad surrender to Him in whom all the highest motives which actuate humanity reside, and from whom they take their origin. The Lord Jesus represents this central character to the world. This self-surrender to the will of God is wisdom. We are starting out with the end in view to make something of ourselves which shall stand the shock of death and the wear of eternity. Now it is wise to give the conduct of this process into the hands of God. And for two very simple reasons. 1. Because we do not know the elements which would work into the character we desire. And, 2. We have not the power to combine them if we did. (Henry Elliot Mort.) Parallel Verses KJV: Should it be according to thy mind? he will recompense it, whether thou refuse, or whether thou choose; and not I: therefore speak what thou knowest. |
    |