Written by: April J. Buchanan
Have you ever met with Him in the way, talked with Him in the street, listened to His sayings, leaned upon His counsel, walked according to His steps, adopted His demeanor, memorized His words, and, when others see you, they see marks of Him in every faculty of your person?
Only the fool thinks he can remain outside the fellowship of the saints and sit among the wicked without his feet becoming stained by the world and his person beginning to sound more like the unregenerate than the Lord he claims to love.
Only the fool thinks he can set down his Bible a little at a time until he spends so little time in it that even those precious childhood verses he committed to memory have become unfamiliar on his tongue, while the world’s sayings have become the familiar, bitter taste upon his lips. If he truly belongs to the Lord, the bitterness will not fade but increase, and his soul shall be increasingly in misery. Only the fool intentionally sets down his Bible to sit among the unregenerate and enjoy the company of fools.
Only the fool thinks fellowship with the saints, sound doctrine, and participation in the ordinances of baptism and communion are sufficient for the soul while neglecting prayer. He who sits with the wise and takes sweet counsel among aged saints who have walked worthily, yet never hears of their prayers or finds his own prayer closet a burdensome duty, is a fool striving against the very Book in which he so delights. How can he look upon the many texts that teach and command him to pray and yet think he is the one saint who will do well in his way without such precious solitude with God? Who but the fool?
Only the fool thinks he has no good thing with which to benefit the body of which he is a part. So he gives nothing to encourage the saints, help the saints, pray for the saints, or contribute to the strengthening and support of the body. Somehow, he has determined that God overlooked him in gifting, and he reasons within himself that he would do good by staying out of the way and letting others, who are better equipped, do the work.
Only the fool thinks the tongue and heart of the unregenerate so powerful, and their weapons so formidable, that his own ability to wield the weapons of truth can never increase. He never takes them up to proclaim the truth to the lost, whom the Spirit may yet save. Only the fool dies never having declared the glorious Gospel. Only the fool thinks his testimony and his “blessings” are a sufficient substitute for proclaiming the truth that God uses to call sinners to Christ.
Only the fool thinks himself too old to examine his life, his faith, his works, and his words. How could one walk so long in error and put off testing himself again and again until he becomes old? He looks not to Christ but to what it will cost him. In every season of life, something else becomes more important, until he is old and then thinks himself too old to change. What he has done and believed will have to do, so says the fool against his own heart and against the God he claims to love. Would it not be better for a man’s works to be burned up and the end of his life to be to the glory of his God than for him to perish while looking back on what is worthless? Yet he looks ahead and decides he will finish as he has lived, hoping that, though his works may be burned up, perhaps his own soul will be preserved.
Only the fool makes himself so withdrawn and unapproachable that he might as well be a creature that lives in solitude and keeps itself hidden. He makes no effort to be friendly, kind, generous, or hospitable, even when the opportunities are small and ordinary. A stranger he never entertains, and conversations he avoids as though they were a plague. His own comfort is his delight, and he protects it devotedly. He is a lover of his own soul and every comfort that serves it.
Only the fool is so boisterous and loud, so free with his words, that he excuses his offenses and gathers many friends, only to learn later that few were faithful. A man may find many friends along the way, but in the end, he finds that few are faithful. The fool may seek many friends and take them up as he takes up so many other earthly comforts. Such are those who make this their great end at the cost of delighting in the counsel of the Lord, abiding in Him, and walking with Him, even when doing so may cost them friends along the way.
It is only the fool who may examine his own life, find a list of fools, and think himself better than them all because he did not make the list. He praises himself. Every man wrestles against that old foolish man if he truly belongs to Christ. To find in himself only a wise man and never a fool is to think himself better than he is, and pride has entered his house.
Examine yourselves often, and deliver the foolish man to Christ daily. Learn of Him and follow Him. Let that foolish man be put off day by day, and let the new man take on the image of Christ more and more, day by day, to the glory of God our Father.
Grace to you all.
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