CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 14:14. Filled with, i.e., “satisfied with.” Stuart translates the latter clause, “Away from him is the good man,” i.e., he will keep aloof from the backslider.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 14:14
SATISFACTION AND DISSATISFACTION
I. The position and character of the backslider. The word suggests that there has been a time in the past when his moral standing was high. There must have once been a going forward, if there is now a sliding backward. Up to a certain time progress was made. Of many followers of our Lord it is written that from a certain period “they went back and walked no more with him.” (John 6:66). They had walked with him in outward discipleship at least, and it is probable that their hearts had been more or less influenced for good. Their “walking no more” was a going back probably in outward life, certainly in right disposition towards the Christ of God. The man of our text is “a backslider in heart.” Then there must once have been a going forward of his soul towards God and goodness, an onward movement towards righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. But the forward movement has ceased—the retrograde movement has set in within the man, although it may not immediately be seen in his outward conduct. Solomon was himself a sad example of a backslider. In his early days his heart was turned towards his God, his desires after righteousness were strong, his moral progress a reality. No one can read his dedication prayer without feeling that the man who offered it stood in right relations with his God—that his aspirations were after righteousness of heart and life. He is himself a proof of the certain fact that a man can terribly deteriorate in character even after he has given evidence of a progression in the good and the right way.
II. His portion. “He shall be filled with his own ways.” Retribution will flow from both his past and present character. The remembrance of what he once was will embitter the present. To think of what might have been is in itself a hell when a man feels that by his own act he is now far lower in the moral scale than he once was. How it must embitter the misery of the fallen angels to remember that they once stood sinless before God’s throne, and, but for their own act, would stand there still. In one of the writings of Lucian, he represents the ghost of a man who has left the world coming up for judgment before the bar of Rhadamanthus. He had lived so depraved a life that his judge exclaims that a new punishment is needed that will be in some degree adequate to his unparalleled villany. A poor cobbler, standing by, suggests that it will be enough if the cup of Lethe, which was supposed to obliterate all remembrance of the past, and which each shade was permitted to drink as he passed from the dread tribunal, should, in this instance, be withheld. And the criminal was therefore condemned to remember for ever what he had done in life, and this was held to be retribution sufficient for the worst of crimes. And if this is true of every wicked man, surely to be filled with the remembrance of what he once was will be the bitterest cup that can be the portion of every backslider.
III. The portion of the godly man. He, too, shall be filled with his own ways, but it will be the fulness of satisfaction. The foundation of real happiness is in character alone. The blessedness of the Eternal God comes from nothing outside of Himself. It has its foundation in His own perfect character. So nothing outside a man can yield him satisfaction. It must come from what he is—from his partaking in some degree of the character of the ever-blessed God. In proportion as he approaches that—in proportion as he brings forth the fruits of righteousness—will he be conscious of a well-spring of satisfaction which is quite independent of outward circumstances. This well-spring has the advantage of being always at hand. A man may often find himself shut out from external sources of joy, death may part him from those who have largely ministered to his happiness, but wherever he is—whether in this world or another—a “well of water” which is “within him” (John 4:14) is always at hand. It is needless to remark that this well-spring does not originate with man, but is the outcome of relationship and communion with God.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Temporary backsliding may take place in the true children of God; but the “backslider” here is evidently he who, in the language of the apostle, “goes back unto perdition.” Solomon alludes to such perpetual backsliding on the part of those who thus prove themselves to have been no more than professors—“having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Such characters, whatever appearances they present to the eye of men,—even of the people of God, with whom they associate, never were vitally and savingly one with Christ, and one with true believers in Him. This is as plainly affirmed as it is in the power of language to affirm it. “They went out from us but they were not of us; for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us” (1 John 2:19).—Wardlaw.
Every spot is not the leprosy. Every mark of sin does not prove a backslider. “A man may be overtaken in a fault” (Galatians 6:1); or it may be the sin of ignorance (Leviticus 4:2., Hebrews 5:2) or sin abhorred, resisted, yet still cleaving (Romans 7:15-24). Backsliding implies a wilful step; not always open, but the more dangerous, because hidden. Here was no open apostasy, perhaps no tangible inconsistency. Nay, the man may be looked up to as an eminent saint, but he is a backslider in heart.—Bridges.
The upright is satisfied from his own conscience, which though it be not the original spring, yet is the conduit at which he drinks peace, joy, and encouragement.—Flavel.
The wicked are travelling; and they seek an end; and they confidently expect it, but they never get it. What they do get, therefore, is their journey. The old man has got about enough of travelling, but enough, if he be an impenitent man, of nothing else, in either world, whatever. The saint may have very little on the earth, but he has made more than his own journey. “The backslider in heart.” Not a Christian. A Christian never really backslides. Not, therefore, what our usage means, but a heart sliding back, as every lost heart does. The writer has but written a fresh name for the impenitent. Such a sliding heart will just have its journey at last, and nothing for it.—Miller.
What a world of sound theology lies in the deliverance of this verse—telling us how much the rewards and punishments of the Divine administration lie in the subjective state, apart from the objective circumstances.—Chalmers.
Good men know within themselves that they have in heaven a better and more enduring substance (Hebrews 10:34); within themselves, they know it not in others, not in books, but in their own experience and apprehension. They can feelingly say that “in doing God’s will”—not only for doing it, or after it was now done, but even while they were doing it—“there was great reward” (Psalms 19:11). Righteousness is never without a double joy to be its strength: “Joy in hand and in hope, in present possession and in certain reversion” (Bernard).—Trapp.
All engineering proceeds upon the principle of reaching great heights or depths by almost imperceptible inclines. The adversary of men works by this will. When you see a man who was once counted a Christian standing shameless on a mountain-top of impiety, or lying in the miry pit of vice, you may safely assume that he has long been worming his way in secret on the spiral slimy track by which the old serpent marks and smooths the way to death … Whatever the enormity it may end in, backsliding begins in the heart … There is a weighing beam exposed to public view, with one scale loaded and resting on the ground, while the other dangles high and empty in the air. Everybody is familiar with the object, and its aspect. One day curiosity is arrested by observing the low and loaded beam is swinging aloft, while the side which hung empty and light has sunk to the ground. Speculation is set on edge by the phenomenon, and at rest again by the discovery of its cause. For many days certain diminutive but busy insects had, for some object of their own, been transferring the material from the full to the empty scale. Day by day the sides approached an equilibrium, but no change took place in their position. At last a grain more removed from one side and laid in the other reversed the preponderance, and produced the change. There is a similar balancing of good and evil in the human heart. The sudden outward change proceeds from a gradual inward preparation.—Arnot.
Every man, both good and bad, shall feel himself sufficiently recompensed for his service.—Dod.
“A good man shall be satisfied from himself.”
I. He can bear his own company, his own thoughts. What is it that makes solitude so irksome to mankind? They cannot bear reflection.… Generally, we know, all is not right. Men do not like to look steadily at themselves, because, like the bankrupt tradesman who dreads striking a balance, they have a secret suspicion that their lives will not bear a rigid scrutiny … The good man does not fear to probe his wound to the bottom.
II. He is independent, as other men are not, of earthly vicissitudes. Men who have their portion here are never safe. The world is a disappointing world, but the good man’s eyes are opened to see the glories of a better … It is a doomed world, but his treasure is safe … Let other men be suddenly driven from the pleasures, occupations, and companions with which habit has made them familiar, and they are like shipwrecked voyagers whose wealth has all gone down in the vessel in which they sailed. He is like a man who has escaped to shore with a casket of jewels in which his whole fortune is invested.
III. He stands for judgment, not at the world’s bar, but at the tribunal of his own conscience. “It is a small thing,” said St. Paul, “that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment.” Was he, then, a morose man who cared nothing about his neighbours? No, but his conscience was ruled by God’s law, and in the very act of submitting himself to Christ as the Lord of his life and soul, he became comparatively independent of all besides.—J. H. Gurney.