James 4:13-17 Go to now, you that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:… I. LIFE IS A DIVINE GIFT. We are so accustomed to look upon life and all that it brings with it as absolutely our own, to be spent in any way we choose, that to grasp the thought of its being a gift for which we are responsible is to experience a radical revolution in our favourite modes of thinking. The false view of life, which is so prevalent, springs from the fact that men are endowed with the power of moulding circumstances to their will, the power of manipulating forces for their own ends, and therefore are prone to make themselves their own centre — "the be-all and the end-all" of the universe. Hence, I think we may say that the difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate lies fundamentally in this, that while the former have become aware of a Divine purpose in history, and a Divine meaning in life, and are endeavouring to carry forward the one and to realise the other, the latter are blind to these things, and are the unwilling, unconscious instruments in God's hand for the achievement of His will. The controversy between the Church and the world is reduced to this issue — whether life shall be interpreted in and for itself, or in and for God. Nothing is more sad, and yet nothing is more characteristic of our own age, than its boastful dependence on self, its claims to summon all things in heaven and earth before its tribunal, and its arrogant assumption of superiority over all the eras of the past. Well for it were it more distrustful of self! The man of business, for instance, whose trade or occupation is flourishing, whose balance at the banker's is mounting up by hundreds or thousands, with whom, in common phrase, the world is going well, is he not prone to nourish a sort of self-satisfaction, a feeling that his success is traceable all along to the shrewd common sense and business capacity which are his? The man whose interests are chiefly intellectual, the politician, the statesman, the author, as he listens to the plaudits of admiring crowds, or reads the warm eulogies of newspapers and reviews, does he not at times congratulate himself upon the skill of brain and strength of will which could raise him so high above the mass of men? Life in these cases is valued indeed for itself, the material comfort it can command, the social influence it can secure. To become independent of God is to become dependent on things that are but hollow mockeries. Now, in order to be rescued from this false independence of God, we must grasp by the spiritual understanding this thought, that life is a Divine gift. God gives it to us freely, without merit or effort on our part. Life, therefore, involves — first, reason, and second, a purpose. 1. As to its reason. Life is rooted in Divine love. If we are not to lose faith in humanity, in progress, and in the future of the world, we must hold fast by God's love as lying at the deepest roots of life, even though many things seem to shake our assurance. God loves us, and hence He gives us life. Love is active, exists, indeed, in virtue of its exercise. It creates worlds, and peoples them with happy spirits. Nay, more, it surrounds these spirits with every influence that can evoke their love and satisfy their yearnings. There are moments which come to the most of us when we can almost echo the prayer of one who was a great sufferer — "Wherefore, then, hast Thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh, that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!" The answer to our heart's pain is to be found here — God gives us life, therefore He loves us. His love is the all-sufficient reply to the pains and losses of his. But, now, look at this thought in another aspect. If life is the evidence of Divine love, then, I take it, there is the closest bond existing between God and man. Some religious teachers speak of the sinner as though he lived in the remotest fringe of God's universe, outside the range of His love, though not of His power. This is to misconceive the true relation. For, indeed, what closer bond or stronger link can unite God and the sinner than eternal love? If this fails, where shall we find a power that shall succeed? If God's love fails to win men from their sins, where shall we discover the force that shall avail? Ah! the hope for humanity lies here. A great German preacher is reported to have said of himself, "I was brought up in a hard school; my father taught me not to cry out even though my head was dashed against a wall. But when I saw my sins, and realised the love of God, I could not refrain from weeping like a child." Pessimism — the belief that life is essentially evil — is in its deepest ground the result of spiritual blindness. And to be blind to the affections of God's heart is the greatest curse that can come to man. 2. As to its purpose. Life is given us to realise the Divine will. This also is a thought which comes to most of us as with the freshness of revelation. The majority of men do not realise that life includes a Divine purpose. They are a sort of moral flotsam and jetsam, at the mercy of every wave or eddy of circumstance, devoid of stability, and, therefore, devoid of all noble effort or attainment. Is not this the secret of the weakness, the irresolution, the incapacity which dogs some men throughout all their life? They bare never seen our first principle — that life itself is a gift, the outgoing of God's heart of love, and therefore a something to be used in His service and for His glory. Love seeks a return, lives in hope of such; and God endows us with life, that we may love Him. But our love to Him cannot be created by coercion or stern exaction from without; it must be the free, glad utterance of obedient hearts. The task which our love to God has to face is that of penetrating and subduing every force and faculty of our nature with its own sweet influence, of bringing every thought, in apostolic phrase, "into captivity to the law of Christ." As Mazzini, the Italian patriot once said, "Life is a mission, and duty a supreme law." There is no grander conception of man than that he is God's missionary. We are called to a kingly mission. That is, one essential element of God's ideal of man is that he shall rule himself, that he shall check with firm reign every lawless appetite, that he shall bring all the manifold energies of his being into subjection to a governing central authority. And what He wants He performs if we are but willing. If we receive Him into our hearts, He will engift us with a kingly power by emancipating us from selfish aims, and degrading fears, and petty motives, that make life such a mean and commonplace thing. But Christ calls us to a priestly mission as well. To have a well-disciplined soul is a good thing. To know that all its powers are working harmoniously together under the central sway of the man himself is something worth aiming at. But Christ beckons us to a higher privilege still. The man whose spirit is thus well ordered, whose intellect and affections are balanced by a ready will and a tender conscience, is to consecrate himself and all his powers to God. A self-discipline that never can get beyond itself is at heart utterly selfish. The ages in our own history most fruitful of good, most full of the heroic element, were ages when the consciousness of men was saturated with the thought of God. The Reformation era which could produce a Luther, a Knox, a Zwingle, a Calvin, the Puritan age which could create a Cromwell, a Baxter, a Milton, a Bunyan, were times when the name of God had not become a theological phrase, but vital realities, unseen, but all-powerful, in living relation with the practical interests of man. II. LIFE IS A DIVINE DISCIPLINE. When we are asked to believe in life as an effluence or product of Divine love, we are brought face to face with serious difficulties that seem to bar the way to faith. If God loves me, as you say, and has, therefore, bestowed upon me the gift of life, how is it that He has marred His gift by pain and loss and grief; has turned for me what might have been a blessing into what is little less than a curse? I have read somewhere that Christ's earthly life is far from being an ideal one, because it was essentially sorrowful. But I ask, is not this the secret of its undying charm for men, that it meets them in the greatest crisis of their history, when the brain is stunned with grief, and the heart pierced with sore trials, and life stands forth, bare and gaunt, as a terrible tragedy? Viewing life, then, as having sorrow for its pervading element, our faith in a God of love can be saved only by extending our vision beyond the boundaries of the present, by seeing that our calling and privileges and opportunities now form a discipline to prepare us for a grander and truer life hereafter. Here, again, it may be seen how a pessimistic way of thinking often takes its rise. To put aside the revelation which Christ makes to us of the future, is to shut men up to despair, unrelieved by a single gleam of light. Admit that revelation, however, and though all difficulties are not thereby removed, yet feeling so many to be mitigated, we can bear the rest until the day of clearer light and fuller knowledge. Now, this mitigation may be seen in two ways. 1. Discipline is a test of character. When God wishes to bring a man to see himself, to disentangle him, as it were, from the disguises which he is prone to wear before his fellow-men, He does it perhaps, by suddenly throwing upon him responsibilities of which he had never dreamt, or, perhaps, by confronting trim with an emergency that demands quick resolution and determined effort. It is then that what is most real in the man comes out. The weakness or strength of character is seen in how it meets the Divine test. God has many ways of effecting this self-revelation. Just as a lightning flash at midnight reveals in a moment the Wooded height or rocky foreland which the murky darkness had concealed, so do the great crises of life unveil, as with the mystic touch of God, the basis of character, the things that have made it what it is. Is it an accession to sudden fortune? A favourable discipline surely! Yet have we not heard of cases where men, intoxicated by the new power that has come to them, have forgotten the simple virtues of their former state, and have become slaves to pride and selfishness, and a hundred other evils? Is it poverty? Then it may be God's design to test whether the graces and virtues so conspicuous in times of comfort were real or not. In these various ways does God test us. But through them all there is a unity of purpose — the taking of us out of the pretences and make-believes of the world, and the planting of us on the eternal realities of the unseen. 2. Discipline is indispensable to the realisation of the Divine Ideal. We all start in life with grand aims. Our ideals are fair and lovely to look upon. And in the joy which a vision of them creates we think we have but to stretch forth our hands and they are ours. But soon we discover our mistake. Contact with the prosaic realities of the world, or the pressure of unforeseen difficulties and hindrances, soon dashes our enthusiasm with an element of distrust, and the "vision splendid" is in danger of fading into the "light of common day." Not thus, nor so quickly, is our dream to be translated into the region of solid fact. It is only by a baptism of the "spirit of burning" that our highest modes of thought can be cleansed from the self-reference or self-pleasing which is so liable to vitiate them. God's ideal is very different from man's, even at the best. Is not this an important part of our life work? — to see how poor and cramped our noblest spiritual creations are when compared with the archetypal thoughts of God. And this we can never see except through discipline. If to obtain a knowledge of the material world and its laws men will spend days and nights of anxious labour, surely it ought not to be considered strange if the supreme possession of the soul, God Himself, cannot be won without at least some spiritual struggle. It is a familiar fact that things of earthly value which are easily purchased are lightly esteemed. Is it not so in the spiritual region? (J. A. Anderson.) Parallel Verses KJV: Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: |
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