of God which is prior to, behind and above, yet always in, the sense and the non-sense of man. In every moment it is the altogether new, in every moment it is the totally different possibility: even God! Shall we grow hysterical in the face of it? Shall we rejoice about it? Both are possible, sometimes both at the same time. More important is the question as to whether we will heed it. The Bible can be eye and ear to us whereby we can see what really is contained within our own lives. God is! This is what the people of the Bible say. And they ask us: Who sees? Who hears? Who believes our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? That is the Bible’s “but.”
The Lord weigheth the spirits, says our text. One could say that this is just what the Bible tries to say. For the Bible does not always say the same thing over and over again, but it does say this one thing again and again: But the Lord weigheth the spirits. This is the same thing the Bible says on other pages: But he who dwelleth in the heavens shall laugh, he shall have them in derision!… But my words shall never pass away … But he was wounded for our transgressions and because of our sins was he smitten … But Christ is raised from the dead and has become the first-fruits of them that slept … The “but” of the Bible proclaims to us the existence and the deeds of God. Who is God? He who always confronts us as Lord, incomparable, startling, unforeseen, He who possesses all and is all, over against whom we are nothing and possess nothing, and from whom our possessions and existences come as the shadow does from the light. What does God do? He weigheth the spirits. The spirits are the spirits of men. We, too, are on His scales, examined of Him, judged by Him, put to the test by Him to see how much we are worth in His estimation. That is our life-situation, as seen from the point of view of God’s existence and deeds.
The next thing of importance is that we are being weighed. We ourselves weigh and are weighed. We make judgments as to good and evil, truth and falsity; we discriminate between the worth and the unworthiness of our experiences in various situations and achievements which confront us, between the words and the deeds of mankind as well as our own. From day to day and year to year we go through our existence with a scale in our hand more or less observantly testing. But where did we get these scales? How do we know what we simply cannot know? That is the novelty: with our tiny scale in hand we are ourselves in the great scale. Not only do we discriminate but we are being discriminated. We not only judge, but are being judged. We not only apprehend, but are being apprehended. An eye that sees me, an ear that hears me, a master who is proving me, a judge who is judging me, a king who chooses me or does not choose me—that is the final, deepest truth of my life and it is not merely my own seeing, hearing, testing, judging, and choosing.
We humans are apt to pass over this truth very often and with great unconcern. That is why we are so vociferous and forcible, especially in our complaints and indictments, as well as in our boastings and assertions. We overlook the fact that what we say must not be taken so seriously, no matter how serious it may be to us. What we say is not so important, but rather what is being said to us. That is why we are generally so disunited in our weighings, why we mutually contradict ourselves by valuing what we say and thus contradict ourselves and involve ourselves in strife. If we only realized that we are all being judged, then we must and would judge with the greatest reserve and eventually cease judging altogether. That is why there is so much error in our judging and discriminating. Our opinions can be true only when they proceed out of what God thinks about us. But if we build our houses so that the peak of the roof becomes the foundation, we shall surely experience their downfall. Again and again a vigorous, deliberate thoughtfulness is necessary, and perhaps very bitter experiences, to bring us to the consciousness, whereby we will be quiet and perceive that before we weigh, we are weighed, that before we let our little lights shine, we are first in the presence of a great light.
The Lord weigheth the spirits, it says. We humans weigh by the gross, as we say. What is life? It is the journey of man through his allotted time; his infancy and aging; those pieces of good fortune and those of ill fortune which befall him; his appearance which gradually takes on sharper lines until upon the deathbed these lines finally, intuitively indicate what his character actually was; the pleasant or unpleasant impressions which he arouses; his words, whereby we habitually read his thoughts; his achievements from which we think we learn what he is or is not capable of doing; the influence which radiates out from him; his success which he possesses or does not possess. As we look upon all this we judge a human life, and perhaps ourselves, as a fortunate or unfortunate, a good or bad, a worthy or unworthy person. On the basis of these things we respect or neglect, love or hate. What is life? The trek of mankind through the ages; the history of differing epochs or cycles of culture; the variations among mankind; how they labor, feed, clothe and educate themselves; how they separate themselves in war and peace; mankind’s great men; their ingenuity and discoveries; the battles won and lost; their monarchies and democracies; their art and science; the untold possibilities of their faith; and finally their gods and idols.
Viewing all this we speak of world history, of progress and evolution, of the glorious past, tragic present and darker future. But the Lord weigheth the spirits. Is this then life? Or what is life in all this? Do we not err when we weigh in gross? The Lord weighs the true weight, the content. This content is secreted in all sorts of crevices, but what are the crevices without a content? The crevices are not weighed along. The spirits are the essential things weighed. The spirits, the spirits of men are life which surges, moves, creates in all that is called life, whether good or evil. The spirits are the fruits of which it is said—by them shall ye know them, the fruits which are gathered in the eternal granaries of God, as well as the weeds which shall be consumed with eternal fire. The spirits dwell beneath all sorts of countenances, and the countenance does not always correspond to the spirit which dwells beneath. The spirits speak in various languages and not always does the great spirit speak out of the great deed, nor the small spirit out of the insignificant.
All the evil that folks plan does not proceed out of the evil spirit, nor does all good come out of the good spirit. The spirits dwell in the highest as well as in the lowest strata of mankind and where they dwell no one knows. The spirit is the man himself as God alone knows him. He is the man as he is penetrated through and weighed of God, as he stands naked before God, for or against God, honest or dishonest, true or untrue, chosen or rejected. The spirit of man is in the scale of God. The novelty of this fact is: Our sins cannot corrupt us, our righteousness cannot save us, it is the spirit that comes to judgment. The spirit of man that comes to judgment is the tap-root of man in eternity, the spirit is as an open window facing Jerusalem, the spirit is as the question full of answers: how can I gain a merciful God? The spirit is as suffering pregnant with a hopeful hearing: Thy Kingdom come! What is the significance of anything and everything else, what is the significance of progress and decadence of the world’s history in the face of this one thing? How do you stand towards this one thing? There life itself becomes a burning question, there is the difference between life and death, there is the finger which writes upon the wall: numbered, weighed—and perhaps—found too light. And it is the Lord who weighs the spirits. God is the Spirit of all spirits and thus their judge. God’s word is the living, powerful, sharp, double-cutting sword. God is the truth of our lives, of all life. We cannot be respectful enough, we cannot retreat back far enough, we cannot stand distant enough so as to even faintly conceive what it means that God weighs the spirits.
It is possible that whenever we utter the word “God” we think of something high, great and beautiful, as a goal or ideal which we have set for ourselves. But fundamentally that would be a weighing of ourselves by ourselves; we ourselves would be our own judges and emancipate or condemn ourselves. But God dwells in a light which no man can approach. Even the highest which we think about Him when measured by His true self is still an illusion. He himself is God. He alone knows us. He alone accepts us or rejects us. He alone, He only. Wherever man stands before God he faces a “Halt!” which he cannot escape, a “Halt!” that can be compared only with death. Whatever belongs to our natural lives is not yet really of God. And what has come to us from God is no longer of us. When in life we are laid upon the scales of God, we are confronted by a death-line, a boundary line of judgment, and whatever is on this side of the line must pass away.
