Isaiah 5:4-6 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? why, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes… 1. Perhaps it may occur to you to object, this lamentation and apparent disappointment? Surely, this is a confession of impotence on the part of the Omnipotent. If God be really what we call Him — Almighty — why should He waste words in futile expostulations! Surely, He who makes the vine put forth her tender grapes and prepares the autumn vintage the wide world over, could, if He pleased, by the mere exercise of His superior power, constrain men to bring forth the fruit that He desires to see brought forth. Why did He not increase the pressure of His power on Israel until He had constrained the disobedient nation to become obedient, and had practically forced them to bring forth their fruit? Our answer to this very natural difficulty is simply this — that the suggestion involves a contradiction. This will be sufficiently obvious as soon as we begin to ask, What is the special fruit that God seeks at the hand of man? The proper fruit of humanity, the fruit that God seeks in human character and life, is the reproduction of the Divine nature. God's purpose in man is answered when He sees in man His own moral likeness formed. But now, inasmuch as God is a free agent, it is only by the possession of a similar moral faculty, and of the capacity of exercising it, and only by its exercise in the highest and best manner, that man can ever be conformed into the Divine image; for no two things are more essentially unlike than an automaton and a free agent. Indeed. I think we might venture to say that even a free agent who uses his freedom badly is morally more like God, just because he is free, than the most perfect automaton — perfect, I mean, in every other particular you can name — could ever hope to become, seeing that he is not, and can never hope to be, free. No doubt God could have arranged that man should be a very different being, and bring forth very different fruit; but then in doing so He would have had to abandon the specific purpose emphatically announced when man was just about to be called into existence — "Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness." St. Paul teaches us that the "gifts and calling of God are without repentance," and we see this illustrated all through the natural world. God does not alter the functions of particular organisms, and make them produce something totally distinct from their own proper type. Were He to do so He would be admitting failure and inconsistency. And as in the material so in the spiritual world. Man has been originally designed to occupy a certain unique position there, and to exercise certain definite functions, and to bring forth a particular kind of fruit to the glory of God, and therefore we may be quite sure that God will not transform him into a being of another order altogether, just to make him do and be what he in his free manhood wills not to do or to be. 2. But it might still be urged, Would not God be acting a kinder part if He withdrew this faculty of free will which has caused us so much trouble, and sin and sorrow — if He were so completely to override it by His own superior power, and so control it that it should be able to exercise no appreciable influence incur conduct, but that He Himself should always have His way? To this we answer, God loves man too much to do anything of the kind. Man's capacity of rising to his proper destiny is involved in his possession and exercise of this faculty of volition. Take it away, and we must needs turn our backs forever upon the thought of rising to the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus; for it is by the use of these wills of ours, and by their voluntary subordination, that we are to be trained, and developed, and educated, and fitted for enjoying that wondrous relation to the Son of God which is spoken of as the spiritual Bridal and Union of Christ and His Church. No; man must remain free, or else his own proper fruit can never be brought forth; and hence there is really and actually moral limit to the Divine resources. 3. Bearing in mind, then, these necessary limitations of the Divine resources, let us each face the inquiry, What more would we have God do for us than He has actually done! I do not my that all are equally privileged, and I can believe that some, in answer to such a challenge, might demand the enjoyment of higher privileges such as others possess. But don't you see that, whatever privileges might thus be secured, the necessity for the action of the will would not and could not be evaded! And so long as this were so, what guarantee would you have that your increased privileges might not mean only enhanced condemnation! Others, who occupy the very position of privilege that you might demand, have only turned their privileges into a curse by sinning against them; and who shall say that it would not be the same with you? Nay, is it not even more than probable that it would be so; for does not our Lord Himself teach us that "he that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much"! Here we have laid down one of the great laws of the moral world. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? |
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