Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIVMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIV
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. John -- Commentaries
But there are two sorts of 'listing.' There is the listing which is the
yielding to the mob of ignoble passions and clamant desires of the
animal nature within us, and there is the 'listing' which is obeying
the impulses of a higher will, that has been blended with ours. And
there you come to the secret of true freedom, which does not consist in
doing as I like, but in liking to do as God wishes me to do. When our
Lord says 'where it listeth,' He implies that a change has passed over
a man, when that new life is born within him, whereby the law, the
known will of God, is written upon his heart, and, inscribed on these
fleshly tables, becomes no longer an iron force external to him, but a
vital impulse within him. That is freedom, to have my better will
absolutely conterminous and coincident with the will of God, so far as
I know it. Just as a man is not imprisoned by limits beyond which he
has no desire to go, so freedom, and elevation, and nobility come by
obeying, not the commands of an external authority, but the impulse of
an inward life.
'Ye have not received the spirit of bondage,' because God hath given us
the Spirit of power, and of love, and of self-control, which keeps down
that base and inferior 'listing,' and elevates the higher and the
nobler one, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,'
because duty has become delight, and there is no desire in the new and
higher nature for anything except that which God enjoins. The true
freedom is when, by the direction of our will, we change 'must' into 'I
delight to do Thy will.' So we are set free from the bondage and burden
of a law that is external, and is not loved, and are brought into the
liberty of, for dear love's sake, doing the will of the beloved.
'Myself shall to my darling be
Both law and impulse,'
says one of the poets about a far inferior matter. It is true in
reference to the Christian life, and the 'liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free,'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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