1903
Temptation to evil is a matter in which our personal moral fiber is involved, just as in a trial through suffering our powers of endurance are tested. What is your attitude toward evil? Is it one of apology and condonement? How perilous! Is it one easy familiarity? God pity your weakness! We have a duty to ourselves. Luther used to say: "We cannot keep the birds from flying around our heads, but we can prevent them from building their nests in our hair." We may not be able to keep temptation away, but we need not let it in the house. We should not expect God to lock the door and keep His hand upon it. We are the doorkeeper of our own souls.
Naturalists tell us that the scorpion will never use his sting, of which he is exceedingly careful, unless he can find a spot on the body of his desired victim sufficiently soft to admit its insertion without fear of injury. Temptation never assails the soul except at vulnerable points. Our own lusts determine the spots which the enemy strikes.
But fortunately the whole burden of resisting temptation to evil does not rest with us. Divine help is promised. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask God." Wisdom is called by a sound writer "the art of Christian conduct." That art can be acquired of Christ Himself. He was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin. He can and will impart the power of successful resistance. Moreover, there is specific promise in the premises. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to men, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will also with the temptation make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." For him that endures there is the blessed crown of life. – Rev. George P. Eckman, pastor of St. Paul's M.E. Church, New York City.
Showing posts with label Martin-Luther. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin-Luther. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Freedom for Service, Freedom from Besetting Sins
1902
CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR
Topic For the Week Beginning Aug. 24 — Comment by Rev. S. H. Doyle.
Topic. — Freedom for service. — 2 Tim. 2:4; Gal. 5:1; Heb. 12:1-2.
God saves us not altogether for the sake of saving us, but also that our lives may be consecrated to Him. We are saved to serve. In the twelfth chapter of Romans Paul says, "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." That this consecration and this service may be performed to the fullest extent it is absolutely necessary that we should be free and untrammeled in our service. That freedom for service is necessary Paul suggests to Timothy by the illustration of the soldier. "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of life that he may please Him that hath chosen him to be a soldier." No soldier can be entangled with other affairs in life. He must give himself up entirely to the service; he must be free from worldly cares and avocations or it will be absolutely impossible for him to produce the best results as a soldier. The same thing is true of the Christian soldier. To be a good soldier of Jesus Christ we must have freedom for service.
1. We must be free from affairs of this life. There is nothing that so much interferes with active Christian service as unnecessary association with the things of this world. A spirit of worldliness crushes out a spirit of consecration and service. An unwise indulgence even in the harmless things of life seriously interferes with the faithful performance of our obligations and our duties to God. Unnecessary worries about the cares and the business pursuits of life deprive us of the power to serve God as we ought to serve Him. While in the world we are not to be of the world to the extent that our relations with the world interfere with the performance of our duties to God.
2. We should be free from false conceptions of the law. "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberties wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." The yoke of bondage here referred to was the bondage of the law. It was the conception of the ancient people of God that they were to be saved by the observance of the law. The result was that they became slaves to the law. It usurped the place in their lives that Christ should have had, and it was impossible under these conditions for them to render the cheerful and whole hearted service to God that was His due. The lives of many Christian people have been made miserable and they have been made incompetent for service by a false attitude toward the law. The early religious experiences of Martin Luther were of such a character. He was taught to look upon God as a severe judge ready to punish and to destroy him for the breaking of His law. He had no idea of God as a kind and loving Father or a realization of the fact that Christ had kept the law for him and had paid the penalty for it on the cross. The result was that his life was miserable and he was unfitted for the best and truest service. It was only "when the scales fell" from his eyes and he lived in the liberty wherewith Christ made him free that he was enabled to perform great service to God. Christians are not above the law; they are not immune from the penalties of the law, and yet in Christ they possess a freedom from it that should inspire them to better lives and should give them greater liberty for effective and whole hearted service.
3. Freedom from besetting sins. "Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." All sins have not the same attractive power for all people. What tempts one man may have no temptation for another. In each one of our lives are besetting sins or sins that easily entwine themselves about us. The apostle here likens the form of such sins to the flowing robe of the Grecian athlete. We can easily understand how the runner would be hindered in the race if he had about him the loose, flowing garment of the Greek. It would wrap itself so closely about him as to hinder his every movement. Such is the result of besetting sins in the life of service. If they are allowed to have power and influence with us, they hinder us and destroy our powers for effective service. That we may be free to serve it is therefore important that we should lay aside all cares and all besetting sins and that we should look to Christ for the power to overcome besetting sins and to continue in the life of faithfulness and of patient service.
CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR
Topic For the Week Beginning Aug. 24 — Comment by Rev. S. H. Doyle.
Topic. — Freedom for service. — 2 Tim. 2:4; Gal. 5:1; Heb. 12:1-2.
God saves us not altogether for the sake of saving us, but also that our lives may be consecrated to Him. We are saved to serve. In the twelfth chapter of Romans Paul says, "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." That this consecration and this service may be performed to the fullest extent it is absolutely necessary that we should be free and untrammeled in our service. That freedom for service is necessary Paul suggests to Timothy by the illustration of the soldier. "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of life that he may please Him that hath chosen him to be a soldier." No soldier can be entangled with other affairs in life. He must give himself up entirely to the service; he must be free from worldly cares and avocations or it will be absolutely impossible for him to produce the best results as a soldier. The same thing is true of the Christian soldier. To be a good soldier of Jesus Christ we must have freedom for service.
1. We must be free from affairs of this life. There is nothing that so much interferes with active Christian service as unnecessary association with the things of this world. A spirit of worldliness crushes out a spirit of consecration and service. An unwise indulgence even in the harmless things of life seriously interferes with the faithful performance of our obligations and our duties to God. Unnecessary worries about the cares and the business pursuits of life deprive us of the power to serve God as we ought to serve Him. While in the world we are not to be of the world to the extent that our relations with the world interfere with the performance of our duties to God.
2. We should be free from false conceptions of the law. "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberties wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." The yoke of bondage here referred to was the bondage of the law. It was the conception of the ancient people of God that they were to be saved by the observance of the law. The result was that they became slaves to the law. It usurped the place in their lives that Christ should have had, and it was impossible under these conditions for them to render the cheerful and whole hearted service to God that was His due. The lives of many Christian people have been made miserable and they have been made incompetent for service by a false attitude toward the law. The early religious experiences of Martin Luther were of such a character. He was taught to look upon God as a severe judge ready to punish and to destroy him for the breaking of His law. He had no idea of God as a kind and loving Father or a realization of the fact that Christ had kept the law for him and had paid the penalty for it on the cross. The result was that his life was miserable and he was unfitted for the best and truest service. It was only "when the scales fell" from his eyes and he lived in the liberty wherewith Christ made him free that he was enabled to perform great service to God. Christians are not above the law; they are not immune from the penalties of the law, and yet in Christ they possess a freedom from it that should inspire them to better lives and should give them greater liberty for effective and whole hearted service.
3. Freedom from besetting sins. "Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." All sins have not the same attractive power for all people. What tempts one man may have no temptation for another. In each one of our lives are besetting sins or sins that easily entwine themselves about us. The apostle here likens the form of such sins to the flowing robe of the Grecian athlete. We can easily understand how the runner would be hindered in the race if he had about him the loose, flowing garment of the Greek. It would wrap itself so closely about him as to hinder his every movement. Such is the result of besetting sins in the life of service. If they are allowed to have power and influence with us, they hinder us and destroy our powers for effective service. That we may be free to serve it is therefore important that we should lay aside all cares and all besetting sins and that we should look to Christ for the power to overcome besetting sins and to continue in the life of faithfulness and of patient service.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Walking in the Light
1874
Thomas à Kempis, shut in the monastery of St. Agnes, in the fifteenth century, began his immortal treatise on the Imitation of Christ with the sentence, "He that keepeth my words shall not walk in darkness, saith the Lord." And according to his faith was it unto him. In the superstitious darkness of that day, leading an obscure life, celebrated for his skill and diligence in copying pious books, à Kempis did not walk in darkness. His devout book shows that he walked in light, and the Father which is in secret set the candle upon a candlestick, so that the light of the German monk's meditations has enlightened the hearts of men in every nation of Christendom even unto this day.
It was in Bedford jail, working hard with his hands to keep his family from starving, with no hope of release, and with impaired health that John Bunyan, the tinker-preacher, drew that noble portrait of the brave, invincible Christian, who kept heart in the Shadow of Death and overthrew Apollyon; and that other one of Faithful, who cheerfully laid down his life in Vanity Fair; and that of brave Hopeful, whose head never sank beneath the waters of the River of Death. In Bedford jail he had that vision of the Delectable Mountains, and of the Giant Great-heart. No circumstances can darken the soul of him who walks in the light.
But there are Christians who ingeniously devise ways of keeping themselves in darkness. We speak of the Dark Ages as though they were indeed of the past; but the Dark Ages always continue, and there are plenty of pious Protestant people who build medieval cloisters for their souls. Hardly a week passes that we do not get a letter from some one who has looked himself in a more hopeless jail than Bunyan's at Bedford, and barred the door with hard texts about unpardonable sins, and hard sayings about the hopelessness of those whose day of grace is gone forever. They have not chosen the Giant Great-heart for their guide, but have taken tie Giant Despair for their keeper. About texts of Scripture there may be mistakes. About the fatherhood of God there can be none. Men who penetrated ancient labyrinths unwound a thread as they went in, that they might have a guide for their wandering feet when they wished to come out. He who tries to understand the intricacies of theological speculation, or to penetrate to the meaning of the dark sayings of Scripture, needs to keep fast hold to the thread of God's fatherhood and tender mercy. If he does not let that go, he will not lose himself in darkness. The first two words of the Lord's Prayer are a torch put into every man's hand to light him through every dark valley.
But there are people with whom this owlish love of darkness is a disease. Drive away one brood of doubts from them and there straightway comes another. Now there is but one remedy for this. Had à Kempis sat idle in his cloister, studying only his own mental exercises, he might have lost himself in a midnight of hopeless darkness. The illuminating of beautiful manuscripts of good books was wholesome employment. Had Bunyan been idle he might easily have brooded on the wretched condition of his family and the dark problems of theology until that jail would have become a very Doubting Castle to his soul. Making tagged laces to save his family from starvation and preaching the Gospel to his fellow-prisoners were fountains of spiritual health to him.
A man's own soul is a dark place. One's motives and thoughts find experiences are a labyrinth never yet explored to the end. An experience that springs from a physical condition not easily separable from one that comes of a spiritual exercise. It is better not to live much there. The course of man's life is from within, outward. He is the healthy man who sees not himself but his work. It is not necessary that one should understand physiology that one may learn which muscles to use in walking. Some men would have their eyes turned round that they might look within, but God pointed all of man's senses outward. Luther, and Bunyan, and Wesley at the critical period of their lives abode in darkness for months or years, not because God willed it, but because they set themselves to study themselves; they lay in wait for their own sins like a cat watching for mice; but when they arose and went forth to do for others the light shone all about them. If a man will darken the windows of his house and refuse to walk abroad he must not imagine that the sun does not shine.
There is a very theological little Sunday-school lullaby that enjoins on a child to "cast his deadly doing down." The doing of a Pharisee is no doubt deadly — rather his Pharisaism is deadly, not his "doing." There is nothing healthier than doing. Let a man called into the vineyard wait for no experiences, but go to work. It is he who hears Christ's words and does them whose house is planted on a rock. The deadliest thing in the universe is idleness and stagnation. — Beecher in Christian Union.
Thomas à Kempis, shut in the monastery of St. Agnes, in the fifteenth century, began his immortal treatise on the Imitation of Christ with the sentence, "He that keepeth my words shall not walk in darkness, saith the Lord." And according to his faith was it unto him. In the superstitious darkness of that day, leading an obscure life, celebrated for his skill and diligence in copying pious books, à Kempis did not walk in darkness. His devout book shows that he walked in light, and the Father which is in secret set the candle upon a candlestick, so that the light of the German monk's meditations has enlightened the hearts of men in every nation of Christendom even unto this day.
It was in Bedford jail, working hard with his hands to keep his family from starving, with no hope of release, and with impaired health that John Bunyan, the tinker-preacher, drew that noble portrait of the brave, invincible Christian, who kept heart in the Shadow of Death and overthrew Apollyon; and that other one of Faithful, who cheerfully laid down his life in Vanity Fair; and that of brave Hopeful, whose head never sank beneath the waters of the River of Death. In Bedford jail he had that vision of the Delectable Mountains, and of the Giant Great-heart. No circumstances can darken the soul of him who walks in the light.
But there are Christians who ingeniously devise ways of keeping themselves in darkness. We speak of the Dark Ages as though they were indeed of the past; but the Dark Ages always continue, and there are plenty of pious Protestant people who build medieval cloisters for their souls. Hardly a week passes that we do not get a letter from some one who has looked himself in a more hopeless jail than Bunyan's at Bedford, and barred the door with hard texts about unpardonable sins, and hard sayings about the hopelessness of those whose day of grace is gone forever. They have not chosen the Giant Great-heart for their guide, but have taken tie Giant Despair for their keeper. About texts of Scripture there may be mistakes. About the fatherhood of God there can be none. Men who penetrated ancient labyrinths unwound a thread as they went in, that they might have a guide for their wandering feet when they wished to come out. He who tries to understand the intricacies of theological speculation, or to penetrate to the meaning of the dark sayings of Scripture, needs to keep fast hold to the thread of God's fatherhood and tender mercy. If he does not let that go, he will not lose himself in darkness. The first two words of the Lord's Prayer are a torch put into every man's hand to light him through every dark valley.
But there are people with whom this owlish love of darkness is a disease. Drive away one brood of doubts from them and there straightway comes another. Now there is but one remedy for this. Had à Kempis sat idle in his cloister, studying only his own mental exercises, he might have lost himself in a midnight of hopeless darkness. The illuminating of beautiful manuscripts of good books was wholesome employment. Had Bunyan been idle he might easily have brooded on the wretched condition of his family and the dark problems of theology until that jail would have become a very Doubting Castle to his soul. Making tagged laces to save his family from starvation and preaching the Gospel to his fellow-prisoners were fountains of spiritual health to him.
A man's own soul is a dark place. One's motives and thoughts find experiences are a labyrinth never yet explored to the end. An experience that springs from a physical condition not easily separable from one that comes of a spiritual exercise. It is better not to live much there. The course of man's life is from within, outward. He is the healthy man who sees not himself but his work. It is not necessary that one should understand physiology that one may learn which muscles to use in walking. Some men would have their eyes turned round that they might look within, but God pointed all of man's senses outward. Luther, and Bunyan, and Wesley at the critical period of their lives abode in darkness for months or years, not because God willed it, but because they set themselves to study themselves; they lay in wait for their own sins like a cat watching for mice; but when they arose and went forth to do for others the light shone all about them. If a man will darken the windows of his house and refuse to walk abroad he must not imagine that the sun does not shine.
There is a very theological little Sunday-school lullaby that enjoins on a child to "cast his deadly doing down." The doing of a Pharisee is no doubt deadly — rather his Pharisaism is deadly, not his "doing." There is nothing healthier than doing. Let a man called into the vineyard wait for no experiences, but go to work. It is he who hears Christ's words and does them whose house is planted on a rock. The deadliest thing in the universe is idleness and stagnation. — Beecher in Christian Union.
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