This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous-1 John 5:3. Not to do wrong may be the mark of a slave’s timid obedience. Not to wish to do wrong is the charter of a son’s free and blessed service. There is a higher possibility yet, reserved for Heaven-not to be able to do wrong. Freedom does not consist in doing what I like-that turns out, in the long run, to be the most abject slavery, under the most severe tyrants-but it consists in liking to do what I ought. When my wishes and God’s will coincide, then, and only then, am I free. That is no prison, out of which we do not wish to go. Not to be confined against our wills, but voluntarily to elect to move only within the sacred, charmed, sweet circle of the discerned will of God, is the service and liberty of the sons of God. There are a great many Christians, so-called, who know very little about such blessedness. To many of us religion is a burden. It consists of a number of prohibitions and restrictions and commandments equally unwelcome. “Do not do this,” and all the while I would like to do it. “Do that,” and all the while I do not want to do it. “Pray, because it is your duty; go to chapel, because you think it is God’s will; give money that you would much rather keep in your pockets; abstain from certain things that you hunger for; do other things that you do not a bit desire to do, nor find any pleasure in doing.” That is the religion of hosts of people. They have need to ask themselves whether their religion is Christ’s religion. “My yoke is easy and My burden is light” [Matt. 11:30]. Not because the things that He bids and forbids are less or lighter than those which the world’s morality requires of its followers, but because, so to speak, the yoke is padded with the velvet of love, and inclination coincides in the measure of our true religion with the discerned will of God. This is ever so far ahead of the experience of crowds of professing Christians. There are still great numbers of professing Christians, and I doubt not that I speak to some such, on whose hearts only a very few of the syllables of God’s will are written, and these very faintly and blotted. But remember that the fundamental idea of a covenant implies two people, and duties and obligations on the part of each. If God is promise, there is something for you to do in order that that promise may be fulfilled to you. In Celebration of Life in Him, Dr. Jim DeBruhl, gembeaux@bellsouth.net
