|
8. The way of man is froward and strange: but as for the pure, his work is right.
Observe the striking contrast — man by nature; and man by grace. Who will say that a man is now as he first came from his Maker's hands? (Ecclesiastes 7:29.) How is he born? Froward, “as a wild ass's colt.” (Job 11:12.) How soon does he develop his nature! “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; childhood and youth are vanity.”† Need we add, that this is a strange way? How strange from the God, who made and loved him! Turned from God; “turned to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6); with no law but his lust, no rule but his will (Ephesians 2:3. Titus 3:3); loving his own liberty, but despising true liberty; made by his own self-delusion “the servant of corruption” (2 Peter 2:19); ignorant, licentious, wanton; desiring only to be the fountain of his own happiness, the maker of his own sufficiency.
Take him in his noblest path — the pursuit of wisdom. Here, too, his way is froward and strange. Is not forbidden wisdom his delight — wisdom, not as wisdom, but as forbidden; “intruding” into the counsels, prying into the ark, of God? (Colossians 2:18.) Such was the first appetite of frowardness, not desiring to know God, which “is life eternal” (John 17:3); but to know as God (Genesis 3:5), which was pride in its principle, and death in its issue.
But man, by grace made pure, new “created in the image of his God” (Ephesians 4:24) — mark him well. His will is now conformed to God; his actions are regulated by this perfect standard. Therefore, his rule and aim being right, his work is right. (Titus 1:15.) He lives now, as does his Divine Savior, “to God.” (Romans 6:10, 11.) Such is the dignity of his great object! Such his fellowship with his glorious Head! Such his earnest of heaven, and growing meetness for it! Oh! the mercy of being turned from our own froward and strange way to the pure service of our God! Yet such remains of the frowardness still; such intricacies of self-deceitfulness; such twisted workings of depravity! ‘O heart, heart’ — cries a deep-taught experimental Christian† — ‘what art thou? The vainest, craftiest, wickedest thing in nature!’ And truly, when the stroke goes deep into the soul, when the inner circle, the very center of being, is reached and probed, what hidden evils come to light! O my God! shew me to myself, so far as I can bear the sight, that I may be kept humbled and self-abased; always near my Savior; always applying his precious blood; always covering myself in his pure and perfect work of righteousness!
|