1月2日

At New Year time we hear much of vowing. Solomon's advice is--'Don't vow: because if you make a vow, even in ordinary matters, and do not fulfill it.' To make a promise may simply be a way of shirking responsibility. Never pile up promises before men, and certainly not before God. It is better to run the risk of being considered indecisive, better to be uncertain and not promise, than to promise and not fulfil. 'Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.' Ecclesiastes 5:5

Modern ethical teaching bases everything on the power of the will, but we need to recognize also the perils of the will. The man who has achieved a moral victory by the sheer force of his will is less likely to want to become a Christian than the man who has come to the moral frontier of his own need. It is the obstinate man who makes vows, and by the very fulfillment of his vow he may increase his inability to see things from Jesus Christ's standpoint. When a man is stirred, either by joy or sorrow, or by the seasons of the year, he is apt to make vows which are beyond the possibility of human power to keep.

Jesus Christ bases the entrance to His Kingdom not on a man's vowing and making decisions, but on the realization of his inability to decide. Decisions for Christ fail because the bedrock of Christianity is ignored. It is not our vows before God that tell, but coming to God exactly as we are, in all our weakness, and being held and kept by Him. Make no vows at this New Year time, but look to God and bank on the Reality of Jesus Christ.

God's Workmanship 132

Chambers/Thoughts/1-2

1月2日