We all want to shed tears when we read David's lament over Jonathan. We remember the beginnings of the relationship between David and Jonathan, how their souls were knit together.
Their story is always being taken as a kind of classic and model of friendship, and yet even there...there were divided loyalties in the case of Jonathan - loyalty to the realm of nature, to his father after the flesh, straining against his loyalty to David, and causing him to be a divided personality.
When he is with his father, his heart is with David. When he is with David, he feels the pull of duty to his father. He is a divided man. What a problem divided loyalties present!
Jonathan must have known all about that Amalek episode and what Samuel did; that in the Divine intent the kingdom was then taken from Saul and passed to David; that the Lord forsook Saul and was no longer with him.
He may have known of the consultation with the witch, the touching of that realm forbidden so strongly by the Lord. And yet, on natural grounds of some kind, Jonathan did not break with that whole system of things.
What a different story might have been told if he had taken sides wholly with David and been David's right hand man for the kingdom!
But this divided loyalty involved him in the ultimate tragedy.
And even good people who have been blessed of the Lord, to whom He has shown His favor and whom He has used very greatly, may in the end be involved in spiritual tragedy if for some reason compromise has entered in.
It may have come in because of policy. What a snare policy is! We tell ourselves we must be very careful that we do not do this or that because it may have such and such a result.
It is all policy and diplomacy. 'We must be careful to avoid...' - what? just what we seek to avoid betrays the whole case.
Are we afraid of losing prestige with men, support, friends, position, opportunity?
Do these things weigh with us as over against implicit obedience to the Lord?
If so, there is divided loyalty; and if we allow it, we may at the end pass into terrible tragedy; the tragedy that always follows compromise.
~T. Austin Sparks~
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