Fire and Knowledge

All of us make countless decisions every day—little ones like when to brush our teeth, and big ones like what to spend our money on. When we make a decision, we quickly take a quick snapshot of all of our available options to see which one is best. According to our standards, priorities, and what we think will be best for us in the end, we make our final decision. In short, we weigh things in our minds and find the best contender.

But sometimes even after deliberated weighing we still don’t know which the best contender is. They all look equally advantageous to us. Richard Sibbes, a minister in the early seventeenth century, helps us at these perplexing times by offering the following helps for judgment:

We should judge things as:

• whether they help or hinder our main purpose
• whether they further or help our judgement
• whether they make us more or less spiritual, and so bring us nearer to the fountain of goodness, God himself
• whether they will bring us peace or sorrow at the last
• whether they commend us more or less to God, and whether they are the thing in which we shall approve ourselves to him most.

“We should also judge of things now as we do hereafter when the soul shall be best able to judge, as when we are under any public calamity, or at the hour of death, when the soul gathers itself from all other things to itself. We should look back to former experience and see what is most agreeable to it, and what was best in our worst times. If grace is or was best then, it is best now. We should also labour to judge of things as he does who must judge us, and as holy men judge, who are led by the Spirit. More particularly, we should judge according to what those judge that have no interest in any benefit that may come by the thing which is in question; for outward things blind the eyes even of the wise.” †

The decisions we make in this life affects what happens to us in the life after, when all of our decisions will be judged by that Great and Awesome Judge. Therefore, when we make our various decisions throughout the day, let us ponder what is best based on the previous suggestions and on what Scripture teaches. Remember that Christians are supposed to act like Jesus Christ and make him look good and glorious by what we are doing. If our chosen decision does not “show off” Christ better than the others, it probably isn’t the best decision.

† Taken from Sibbes, Richard. The Bruised Reed (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 101-102. Originally published in 1630.