Bible Commentaries

THE WISE CHOICE

‘Therefore choose life.’

Deuteronomy 30:19

There is one choice which we must all make; and if that choice is once well made, it will very much secure all other choices, for the reason why we so often choose badly is because we have failed in that one great choice of all.

I. ‘Therefore choose life.’—Why ‘therefore’? (1) Because the option rests with yourself. You are free to take which you will. (2) Because the alternative is tremendous, and there is no middle space; it must be life or death. (3) Because life is everything. All that is worth having in this world or the next is in that word ‘life.’ ‘Therefore choose life.’

II. What is life?—(1) The source of life was originally the breath of God. That life was lost when man fell, but only lost to make way for a better restoration. By a mystical process, which we cannot explain, Christ became the Head of a body. ‘Because He lives, we live also,’ and live for ever. This is the source of life. (2) Look at the substance of life, what it is, its reality. Everything is real in proportion as it is consistent with and carries out its own element. Your element is a ‘body and soul and spirit.’ Life’s real substance is to know God, to enjoy God, to serve God. It might be safe to sum it up and say, Life is work: the inner work in one’s own soul, and the outer work of Christian usefulness. The great thing every one has to do is to find out his own proper work, what God has given him to do. And that work is life.

III. What is life’s object?—There may be a series of motives, but the end of motives is the glory of God. We must not seek our own glory, because God seeks His. All is His, and therefore to take any glory from anything is robbing God.

IV. Christ has said, ‘I am the Life.’—Choose the Christ who has so long chosen you, and you will live. He will be in you a necessity of life; you will live for God and with God for ever.

Rev. Jas. Vaughan.

SECOND OUTLINE

There are two ways of interpreting this text: the first literally, by the way of the law; the second spiritually or evangelically, by the way of the gospel. The way of the law is that they should set themselves to work to obey the Ten Commandments: that they should have no other gods but God, that they should worship no idols, that they should keep the Sabbath, honour their parents, commit no murder, no adultery, no theft, and so on. Now this was all they could do till a better way—the way of a higher life—was revealed; but when Christ came this better way, this higher life was revealed in Him. He said: ‘Believe in Me that ye may live—come unto Me that ye may have life, accept Me as your Saviour, and I will give you eternal life both here and hereafter. When you do this you shall keep the law as it was never kept before; for I will make a new covenant with you, which covenant shall be, that I will put My law in your hearts and write it in your minds, so that I and those who represent Me set before you life and death. And when you thus come to Me, receive My sacraments, which are not mere acts of obedience, but means of grace, in one of which you are grafted into Me, the living Vine, and in the other you receive Me as the Bread of heaven, ye receive My Body and Blood, and have My life in you. Then you shall keep the law of My Father, not outwardly, but inwardly. In your inmost soul you shall be poor in spirit, you shall be meek, you shall not only do outward righteousness, but you shall thirst after it; you shall be pure in heart, you shall have the peace of God Himself reigning in you, you shall even rejoice in persecutions, afflictions, distresses, because you shall discern in these the tokens of the love of your heavenly Father. And if you continue in this mind you shall subdue the world to Me. Your light shall so shine in a dark world that men shall see in it the very light of heaven.’

Rev. M. F. Sadler.

THIRD OUTLINE

For what are we all here on this struggling earth? What is the real end for which you live? What is the standard by which we shall be tried, each in turn? How often such questions dart across the mind in the swarming London streets! What is the goal? What purpose does this scurrying serve? What do men and women want to make out of this life? Well, to be sure, there was the gaining of one’s daily bread. That was a prime necessity. But the bread was naturally for the sake of something else. Man wanted to realise his capacities, to do something to fulfil an aim, to satisfy a desire, to feel that before he died he had achieved something, and had not lived in vain. What was that something? What did man set before himself? And not before himself alone, for he could not have a mere individual purpose; he was a social animal, belonging to the fellowship of men. What did they seek, and which, if known, would give meaning and value to all this un-intelligible hubbub?

I. Do not say that it is happiness which is sought.—That was only a word used in laziness of thought when they were first challenged on this point. As an answer they could see, the moment they reflected, how untrue it was to the facts. By saying it they meant that they hoped to be happy in attaining the end they desired; and that meant that happiness itself was not their aim and end. The question was, What was the thing in attaining which they would be happy? The fact that they would be happy in attaining it told them nothing at all about the thing itself. Or, did they mean that they aimed at some particular end, whatever it might be, for the sake of the happiness it would bring? Well, universal experience showed that if they aimed at being happy, they were sure to be disappointed.

II. Let them try another answer—achievement.—Were they here to fulfil a task? That was a noble, inspiring ideal, good and right enough, and brave spirits rose and followed. Only, they looked sadly round on their groaning earth to-day, and wondered how many men there were to whom this ideal would appeal with any hope of success. What would they achieve? What fair and seemly work would they ever be fit to finish? They were looking for an aim common to all, stupid as well as cultivated. These ideals of some perfect achievement were the ideals of the few, of the elect, of the cultivated. What of the maimed, the halt, the damaged, the poor, the fragmentary? What work were they to carry to perfection? It would be a sorry world if that were their only message. Moreover, on this earth there could be so little achievement even for the few, and least of all for the highest. The greatest never attained what they aimed at, but broke themselves in struggling after an ideal hopelessly remote and unattainable. There was a story of the great Archbishop Trench, of Dublin, turning round and looking sadly at a man who had just painted a cart-wheel. ‘I envy that man,’ he said; ‘he has finished something.’ You could finish a cart-wheel; but only because it was a mere cart-wheel. If there was one thing which they had learned with absolute certainty, it was that this earth could never be meant for achievement. This life was not complete in itself. Not by what they achieved were they judged, but by what they tried to achieve, what they left unfinished when they died. ‘What I aspired to be,’ said the poet, ‘and was not, comforts me:’—

‘All I could ever be,

All, men ignored in me,

This, I was worth to God.’

III. What, then, is the answer? What is it that we are all here to do? They were here, as Browning would tell them, to make a choice. Their life’s value would be judged by the choice they made. A moral choice and a moral judgment—that was what they must, at their peril, to their cost, have made before they died. ‘I have set before you this day good and evil, life and death; therefore choose life.’ That was the cardinal secret, the challenge that was to ring in their ears day and night in every variety of experience and circumstance and condition, in hope and in fear, in sorrow and in joy, in confidence and in doubt, in darkness and light, at whatever social level their lot was cast, under whatever limitations life and death were set before them, and they were to choose one or the other; and each such choice determined their bent, and each such determination built up their character, and by that character, so formed, they were judged. Character—that was the key-word needed. They were looking round anxiously in London for men of character. But character belonged to the man who had gained a steady bent towards the right, and who had made his choice, who had committed himself on the side of a sound life, who could be counted on to be straight and true and pure. There was something in the man on which they could rely. His will always made in one way, and nothing could turn it aside, and that was the way of justice, and righteousness, and conscience.

And London throws all its terrible force into the effort to break down character, and does this especially by massing together in dreadful contrast the extremes of wealth and poverty; for both extremes ruined character. Take wealth, for instance, and luxury. These allowed the destruction of character, for they relieved a man from all necessity of making a choice. The man could do what he liked, could float, could drift from careless day to careless night. The man of luxury ‘loafed’ along with nothing to compel decision; and as a mere loafer his character was spoiled, and withered and died. The man was not obliged to act, and life was for him a meaningless vacancy; no choice made, no character formed. This was why character was so near to perishing out in some rich sections of society in the West End. At another end of the scale were the poor, the unskilful, the wreckage, living from hand to mouth from day to day—drifting, loafing in aimless waste. Such a life never had a ground from which it could make a positive choice. It had no power to make its own career; poverty spoiled the chance of self-direction. In that state of things there could be no character. And that was why the true workman dreaded like poison the being out of work. In such an experience he could feel himself sinking lower and lower in self-respect and moral force, just because he had no power of choice. He had lost his purpose, and the very fact of having no worth in men’s eyes tended to make him worthless. He felt himself degenerating, and could not help it. He might drop to the level of a wastrel.

And it was because of this disastrous peril that it became a matter of public responsibility, a matter of national well-being, to see to it that the true workman, in a time of depression, was saved from this fatal lapse. God grant courage and wisdom to come to the rescue of human character, their one imperial asset—nay, their only qualification for the city of God. The actual choice at each moment must be the verdict of one’s own conscience, of one’s own independent will, of one’s own personal character.

Canon Scott Holland.

Illustration

(1) ‘There are those who tell me that I cannot know anything about Him, so distant He is, so high in glory.

When John Bunyan was in distress of soul, he imagined that he heard God talking with the angel in His remote and shining heaven. “This poor, simple wretch doth hanker after Me,” God said, “as if I had nothing to do with My mercy but to bestow it on him.” Many speak to me of the impossibility of my learning either God’s love or God’s law, so infinitely removed He is from me; and they do it jauntily, and with none of Bunyan’s regret.

But the answer to all such scepticism is found in Jesus Christ. In Him God has entered my world, has clothed Himself in my nature, walks by my side, knocks at my door, takes my hand into His own. I may without doubt know Him, hold intimate communion with Him, follow Him: His well-beloved Son is my Brother and Saviour and Friend.

The Word is very nigh unto me, the Living and Personal Word—Jesus, my Lord and my God.’

(2) ‘What bliss can compare with that which is summed up in the words, “The Lord will rejoice over thee for good”? The Word of God, equally with His words, is very nigh. Let us choose life in choosing Him who asks our love, and let us cleave unto Him as the branch cleaves to its parent stem; yea, let us anew yield ourselves to obey His least admonition, so shall we dwell ever in the land of victory and rest and plenty.’

(3) ‘In making this choice, it often seems as though we are turning our back on the open door of heaven and our face to the cross. But it is only so in appearance. Remember that our Lord refused the joy that was unveiled before Him, and set Himself to bear the cross with its shame. Yet through it there has come a greater joy and deeper blessedness than ever. So must it always be.’

(4) ‘We each determine for ourselves whether the knowledge of what we ought to do will lead to life or to death, and by choosing obedience we choose life. Every ray of light from God is capable of producing a double effect. It either gladdens or pains, it either gives vision or blindness. The Gospel, which is the perfect revelation of God in Christ, brings every one of us face to face with the great alternative, and urgently demands from each his personal act of choice, whether he will accept it, or neglect or reject it. Not to choose to accept is to choose to reject. To do nothing is to choose death. The knowledge of the law was not enough, and neither is an intellectual reception of the Gospel. The one bred Pharisees, who were whited sepulchres; the other breeds orthodox professors, who have “a name to live and are dead.” The clearer our light, the heavier our responsibility. If we are to live, we have to “choose life”; and if we do not, by the vigorous exercise of our will, turn away from earth and self, and take Jesus for our Saviour and Lord, loving and obeying Whom we love and obey God, we have effectually chosen a worse death than that of the body, and flung away a better life than that of earth.’