17. Man Needs a Direct Word from God

Man Needs a Direct Word from God The answer to all this is obvious. We must receive our knowledge on what that word “ought” requires from some authority outside the race who knows. And who more certain to know than the God who created us? For, knowing perfectly what our nature is, and thus what means will insure our reaching the goal of the perfect and permanent happiness He plans for us, there is obviously nothing else to do but to look to Him for the knowledge we need. And what could be a more practical thing to do?

God is fully able to give us this knowledge. And He can do it only by a direct word from Himself. This word can come to us only in spoken or written form, for He must tell us in some such direct way, or we cannot be sure of our knowledge. And what He tells us we can receive only in faith; there is no other way. For if we do not know, and He does, there is nothing else to do but to rely on what He says, which is faith in His word.

Then when the information we need is given us, we have only to believe it by acting on it and living it, in the certain knowledge that it is the truth, since it comes from One who cannot lie. For as certainly as the God who loves us and desires our love will not deceive us, just that certainly will He give us truthful guidance all the way to the goal for which He built the deepest urge into the heart of man.

Then if this knowledge is given in simple outline at first, with that outline filled in progressively to suit man’s growing capacity to take it in, faith will accept and act upon it progressively, at least to the limit to which confidence in that word continues. At the very beginning of human history, therefore, God revealed this knowledge to Adam and Eve, condensing it into the form of the one great fundamental moral principle which includes in embryo all the further revelations on the subject that could ever be given. Summed up in its simplest form, He made known to them that full and whole-hearted love to Him, in response to His love for them, was the simple but absolutely certain pathway to their perfect and permanent happiness.

Then that man might not blunder, stumble, and miss his way by trying to frame his own definition of love, thus failing of the goal God purposed for him, the full nature and meaning of love was set before him at the very beginning.

Contrary to what might be imagined, love was not set forth as a delightful emotion or a tender sentiment. Some sort of emotion always lies in the heart that loves, but love itself lies back of all emotion and sentiment, for it arises in the central capacities of the being.

Love is that purposed and active outgoing of the whole life and heart toward another, which deliberately and eagerly puts his happiness in the place of supreme preference, no matter at what cost to the one who loves. This means, therefore, as we have already seen, that love is preference.

Now let the analysis be carried a step further. Preference is ratherness. For that which I prefer is that which I had rather have or do. And ratherness in action is choice. To love God, therefore, is not primarily to have tender sentiments in our thoughts of Him and delightful emotions in His fellowship, but to prefer Him to ourselves, and therefore His desires and will to our own. It is giving Him the first and thus the only place in our lives. This marks out the pathway, therefore, to the goal of perfect happiness. And it is the only pathway there is; anything other than this leads in the opposite direction.

Thus there comes before us again a setting for the selfish and the sacrificial principles. There are but two objects of love: God and self. Based on that axiom, therefore, is determined, according to our choice between these two objects, whether our love shall be sacrificial or selfish.

God thus opened the pathway to perfect and permanent happiness before Adam and Eve, in the only way it could be opened. He set before them a choice of wills, as He revealed His will on things they might freely do, and forbade the one thing they were not to do, this being the only possible way for them to achieve characters of their own, and thus arrive at their full possibilities for real happiness, which would ever continue to fill an eternally expanding capacity.

Then He safeguarded them from a choice of their own wills by telling them plainly the inevitable results of eating the fruit He forbade to them. And He had already safeguarded them on the other side by giving them as much experience of what His love to them would mean in insuring their happiness, as they could take in while still in their condition of mere innocence.