The Expositor's Bible: The Book of DeuteronomyHarper, Andrew
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Deuteronomy
Harper, Andrew
Bible. Deuteronomy -- Commentaries
inner heart of religion nor winding themselves too high for sinful
men.
How hard it is to keep to this reasonable but spiritual view is seen
by popular aberrations both within and without the Church. At times
in the history of the Church Christian teachers have allowed their
minds to be so dominated by the terror of judgment that judgment
has seemed to the world to be the sole burden of their message. As a
reaction from that again, other teachers have arisen who put forward
the love of God in such a one-sided way as to empty it of all its
severe but glorious sublimity; as if, like Mohammed, they believed
God was minded mainly "to make religion easy" unto men. Outside the
Church the same discord prevails. Some secular writers praise those
religions which declare that a man's fate is decided at the judgment
by the balance of merit over demerit in his acts; while others mock
at any judgment, and commit themselves with a light heart to the
half-amused tolerance of the Divine good-nature. But the teaching
which combines both elements can alone sustain and bear up a worthy
spiritual life. To rely upon terror only, is to ignore the very
essence of true religion and the better elements in the nature of
man; for that _will_ not be dominated by fear alone. To think of
the Divine love as a lazy, self-indulgent laxity, is to degrade the
Divine nature, and to forget that the possibility of wrath is bound
up in all love that is worthy of the name.
One other point is worthy of remark. In these chapters, which
deal with the history of God's chosen people in their relations
with Him, there come out the very elements which distinguish the
personal religion of St. Paul. The beginning and end of it all is
the free grace of God. God elected His people that they might be
His instrument for blessing the world, not because of any goodness
in them, for they were perverse and rebellious, but because He had
so determined and had promised to the fathers. He had delivered
them from the bondage of Egypt by His mighty power, and dwelt among
them thenceforth as among no other people. He gave them a land to
dwell in, and there as in His own house He watched and tended them,
and strove to lead them upwards to the height of their calling
as the people of God by demanding of them faith and love. It is a
very enlightening remark of Robertson Smith's that the deliverance
out of Egypt was to Israel in the Old Testament what conversion is
to the individual Christian according to the New Testament. Taking
that as our starting-point, we see that the thought of Deuteronomy
is precisely the thought of Romans. It is said, and truly enough,
that the Pauline theology was a direct transcript of Paul's own
experience; but we see from this that he did not need to form the
moulds for his own fundamental thoughts. Long before him the author
of Deuteronomy had formed these, and they must have been familiar
to every instructed Jew. But the recognition of this is not a loss
but a gain. If St.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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