A Christian's Habits: Chapter Three
A Christian's Habits: Chapter Three
The Habit of Duty (Part One).
“A rigid sense of duty is the noblest thing in life. It is nobler than love.”
Introduction
I like surprises. They bring an opportunity to learn things that I don’t already know. I wasn’t surprised that Speer’s first “habit” was prayer. I was surprised that his second habit was duty. I can’t think of any other contemporary guide to spirituality that even broaches the subject. But Speer gives us not one, not two, but three chapters on the habit of duty. He argues that duty is the most effective and worthwhile thing in life.
Practicing the habit of duty certainly worked for him. Just listen to the following eulogy written by the wife of one of his closest friends upon his death:
To the Beloved Memory of A Righteous Man who loved God and truth above all things - a man of untarnished honor - loyal and chivalrous - gentle and strong - Modest and humble - tender and true - Pitiful to the weak - yearning after the erring - Stern to all forms of wrong and oppression, Yet most stern towards himself - Who being angry, yet sinned not. Whose highest virtues were known only to his wife, his children, his servants, and the poor. Who lived in the presence of God here, And passing through the grave and the gate of death Now liveth unto God forevermore.1
Speer’s lessons on duty have increased my commitment to making good happen in my own life as well. I encourage you, not just to read these chapters, but to study and apply them to your life, not just for your own benefit, but for the benefit of your loved ones as well.
I. Duty in the Life of Jesus and Paul
What words do we use in place of “duty”?
What is your spiritual duty?
One of the most wonderful things in the life of our Lord was his habit of duty. How large a part it played with him is concealed from us because the word is so seldom used in our English translation of the Gospels. The English word “duty” occurs only five times in the King James Version, and but once in the Gospels in the words of Jesus.
“Even so ye also, when ye shall have done all the things that are commanded you, says, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do.”
But the absence of the term does not indicate the absence of the idea. Again and again the thought of duty is expressed by Christ when he says, “I must.” That is not a verbal mood, but a separate word which might as appropriately be translated, “It is my duty.” “It is my duty to be in my Father’s house,” was the first expression of the noble consciousness which was to dominate his career. When his ministry began and the enthusiastic people of Capernaum would have kept him for their local prophet he replied, “It is my duty to preach the good tidings of the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore was I sent.” As the work of his public ministry absorbed him, he said solemnly, “It is our duty to work the works of him that sent me while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work.” The great missionary duty of the divine love lay especially upon his heart and to this and the sacrifice by which it was to be accomplished he often referred. “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also it is my duty to bring.” “It is the duty of the Son of man to suffer many things, and be rejected…and be killed.” And the two great ideas are combined with the implication of the Church’s duty in the words of the Lord after his resurrection. “It was Christ’s duty to suffer, and to rise again from the dead the third day; and [it is your duty to see] that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all nations.” 2 From the first to the last a lofty sense of duty sustained the Son of God.
“Duty and not affinity is the lofty motive of the soul. This was our Lord’s teaching.”
The life of Paul was dominated by the same principle of duty. It was so in his anti-Christian earnestness: “I verily thought with myself that it was my duty to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” Nothing turned him aside from what he believed to be the path of duty. His conscience was serene on this point. He was ready to admit afterwards that his moral judgment had been terribly wrong in those days, and when he afterwards discovered how wrong it had been, he made every reparation in his power, but he never regretted having made duty supreme. And as a persecutor, so as a missionary he bent his life with absolute devotion under his conviction of duty. “What do ye, weeping and breaking my heart?” he remonstrated Philip the Evangelist, in Caesarea, as they sought to dissuade him from the path of duty. “I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die.” With him it was anything for duty.
II. Duty Nobler Than Love
How do you define love?
How does Speer define love in the passage below?
It must be so with us. A rigid sense of duty is the noblest thing in life. It is nobler than love. For in its lower ranges love is tinged with selfishness, and when it rises above these ranges and is pure, untainted by any requirements of return, it melts into duty and becomes and remains the loftier love by virtue of the preservative purity of duty. Only duty can put eternity into love and lift it above all the vicissitudes and disappointments and betrayals of time. And, in fact, the Bible always grounds love upon duty. In it as in God, right is the supreme thing. God is love because he is right. And we are bidden to love because we ought. Duty and not affinity is the lofty motive of the soul. This was our Lord’s teaching. “If you love me, ye will keep my commandments.” But what is it to love him? “Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you.” And the supreme duty he laid upon his disciples, the commandment he called “new” was the duty of love. “And this is his commandment,” says John, “that we should…love one another…If God so loved us, it is our duty to love one another.” Love is not a mood or a caprice. It is a duty. It gets its greatness and its sovereignty from the soul of duty which is in it. There are sensitive souls which have tortured themselves because they could not serve from a sense of buoyant and joyous love. Christ does not ask it. He asks us to do our duty in the strength of God. We do not need to want to tell the truth, or to be unselfish, or to go as foreign missionaries. It is good if we do feel a spontaneous joy in duty. But that is secondary. The duty is the supreme thing and the doing of it will produce the right feelings in time. If it does not, it is of little consequence, if only we have done steadily and honestly what it was our duty to do. For this, as it is the noblest element and the highest motive, is also the one adequate rule of life, “What is right?” “What ought I?” This and not temperament or taste, which may or may not be what they should, is the complete law of life and action and being.
III. Duty and Clarity
What confuses you?
How could duty help you find clarity?
Obedience to the law of duty is the only way to clear up all our intellectual confusion and perplexities.
“Most true it is,” says Carlyle in a familiar quotation, “as a wise man teaches us ‘that doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action.’ On which ground too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to us was of invaluable service. ‘Do the duty that lies nearest thee,’ which thou knowest to be a duty. Thy second duty will already have become clearer.”
This is certainly a law throughout life. If I have doubt as to my ability to learn to swim, I can never resolve the doubt by standing on the bank and arguing about it. It can only be cleared away by my going into the water and making the effort. And so in higher things I can never settle the question of the existence of God and the truth of Christianity, both God and truth will still be unrealities to me without action. I must venture out upon God. I must put Christianity to the test of life. I must do my duty. And if I do my duty, even if my speculations may have baffled me, I shall issue forth at last. Whoever will do right for right’s sake and follow this as a consuming principle will come through to God who is the Right.
Francis Eliza Grenfell, “Charles Kingsley, His Letters, Memories of His Life” chapter 21
Speer wrote long before popular culture made this language threatening. It was good news in his mind, a view of the world in which non-Westerners have the same opportunity Westerners have to be forgiven and offered a new way of making good happen in the world.