Bible Commentaries

The Gospel of Providence

Psalm 44:1

Psalm 44:6

If we take the word "freely" as equivalent to freewill we see what a scope love has in the offering of sacrifices unto God. The verse might be rendered "I will offer a freewill sacrifice." Some offerings we must make, not of our own freewill but by the compulsion of nature, by all the necessities which represent the sterner aspects of life. Some tributes are forced from us. We are obliged to wait for the seasons. We are compelled to bow down our heads if not in acquiescent yet in sullen consent to the decrees of Providence. On other occasions we are, so to say, left to invent the expressions of our own love; God gives us opportunities in which we may show our real quality, and prove what we would do if we could. The great purpose of divine discipline is; to work out the freewill of men. At first man would seem to have no freewill; he is bounded by laws, he is influenced by heredity, he is shut in by circumstances, he is hardly consulted as to the way in which he will spend his own life. We begin our experiences under the rod. Stern commandments say, Thou shalt, Thou shalt not, during every hour of our early existence. Then the time comes when we have a larger manhood. God gives us partial liberty. Having enjoyed this liberty without abusing it we are entrusted with still greater responsibility. As time goes on we seem to have reversed the whole plan of life and to have come into a large heritage of individual freedom. If we have profited by the discipline of life, the freedom which follows it will not be misunderstood or perverted. Freedom itself will be but a larger law. Love will begin to consider what it can do by way of repayment of the divine goodness. Thus we escape the mere literal law, the hard and stern request and command, and come into the exercise of our larger and finer faculties. The question then is, What shall we do now that we have come under the inspiration of love, having escaped the dominion of iron law? If the home-life has been good, wise, and beautiful, children on leaving it will not forget the past, but will begin to wonder how they can recognise the very discipline under which once they chafed. Let us feel that God has given us great liberty in this matter of serving him, and let it be our business not to consider how little we can do in return, but how much.