“Wunderkind” is a German word for child-protege, a child who at such a young age shows great giftedness.  It can be used for someone like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who at age 4 already composed great works of music.

Today I use the word to refer to Samson, son of Manoah, of the tribe of Dan. He was born to parents who had been childless for a long time.  In Israel, being childless is cause for great shame and despair because children are considered gifts from God.  To be childless is to live without blessing from Jehovah.

Everything about Samson screamed “special.”

1. His conception was announced by an angel to his parents.
2. His parents prayed for and were granted a second audience with the angel after the announcement because they felt inadequate and in-need of instruction as to how to raise a child who had been chosen by God for a specific purpose, a specific job.
3. Samson was to be a Nazarite, a man who lives with a vow to be holy and separated for God’s purposes and God’s use. He cannot live with a personal agenda or personal ambition.  He must live only for God to do what God wants him to do.
4. Samson’s appearance would be special as well because he was not allowed to cut his hair.
5. Samson’s diet would be special as well as he would not be allowed to drink wine or liquor or any fermented drink.
6. Samson could not touch anything unclean such as a dead body.  So that if his parents died, he would be unable to wash his parents’ body or lay his parents’ body for burial. In Israel, this is the duty of the first-born son.  Samson, after all was God’s from his conception.
7. Samson would have extra-ordinary, superhuman strength with which he will destroy Israel’s enemies.
8. Samson had the presence of the Holy Spirit come upon him and empower him to do super-human feats of strength.

Yes, Samson was a wunderkind, a superhero.  But being born special, being born with apparent potential does not guarantee success in life. Being born in a christian home or to christian parents who bring you regularly to Sunday School does not guarantee that you will live a life that is pleasing to God.

Samson suffered from what modern behaviorists have dubbed the “little emperor” syndrome.  The ‘ little emperor syndrome” describes the very self-centered, self-indulgent personalities developed by little boys who grow up as the only son of affluent parents in China.  China has a one-child policy, and so parents tend to spoil their only child, lavishing that child with attention and material things so that the child suffers from a tremendous sense of self-importance.  He soon manipulates his parents and controls them, ordering them around to do what he wants, just like the ancient Chinese emperors who ruled as absolute monarchs. Samson usually got what he wanted, often against the counsel and advise of his parents.  He was willful, precipitate in his emotionally-driven outbursts of vengeance and violence.

Samson was supposed to be a judge. At that time, God chose men to be judges in Israel by inward inspiration and a stirring of the Holy Spirit in their being.  Their function was to deliver Israel from the oppression of her enemies, to save Israel from their tendency toward idolatry by leading Israel in the worship of Jehovah.  In times of peace, however, judges were the chief magistrates in Israel.  They applied the law of Moses to the disputes and controversies of the people of Israel.

Samson was impulsive.  He also liked partying with the girls.  He particularly liked women who were not Israelites.  God had warned Israel repeatedly that when they had settled in Canaan, they must not inter-marry with the people of the nations around them who worshiped idols because they would be enticed to worship idols as well.

Samson was headstrong.  He presumed that because God had chosen him, God had empowered him and God had given him an exalted position in Israel, he could do anything he wanted.

Samson had a wife, after marrying her and after being manipulated by her, he left her.  He neglected her.  When he came back for her and discovered that she had been given away to another man, she took vengeance on the Philistines ( the woman was a Philistine) and burned their wheat fields which were about to be harvested.

He then saw another woman, a harlot.  He liked the harlot and came down to see her.  No more is said after that.  And then a few verses later, Delilah, a woman of Sorek was introduced into the story.  Some believe that Delilah was that same harlot.  If this is so, and Delilah was indeed a harlot, Samson has rendered himself unclean twice because of women: he married a Philistine woman, and then he consorted with a harlot.

Samson did not take seriously his job as judge, nor did he take seriously his responsibility as delivered of Israel.  He used his great strength as a sport, a means to make fun of the Philistine by giving them riddles, and then killing them when they answered the riddles by getting his wife and girlfriend to wheedle the answers out of him.

Samson was a judge for only 20 years.  Other judges who did well served as judges for forty years.  The saddest part of Samson’s life is that “he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.”  This means that when the Holy Spirit of God who had come upon him at the start of his ministry finally left him, Samson was not even aware.  So accustomed was Samson to doing his own thing at his own time that he was not led by the Holy Spirit at all.  He ignored the Holy Spirit and took for granted that the Holy Spirit would always be around to give him the power he needed to do whatever he wanted.

The belief that because we are saved by grace and not by works, we can do anything, even willfully commit sin and still be saved is called antinomianism. People who espouse this belief turn the grace of God into license to commit sin because they cannot be condemned to hell anymore. Antinomianism is a heresy.  Salvation is not merely giving people assurance that they will no longer go to hell, salvation begins a relationship of sonship with God.  As sons of God, we have to live up to God’s holy name. We are to submit to God as our Father, depend on Him and trust Him that His plans for our lives are the best for us.  His ways are ways of wisdom and to follow Him will make us pleasing to him.  Sons ought to want to please their fathers especially since sons of God were not only created by their Heavenly Father but also redeemed by Him.

A lot of christians may profess that they do not believe that the assurance of salvation should be a license to commit sin, but truly, they do just that.  They continue to willfully live in sin instead of walking worthy of the name of Jesus who had called them out of darkness into the glorious light of the gospel. Often, christians live self-centered, self-indulgent lives, making choices that benefit them without nary a thought of pleasing God.

Samson’s story is a cautionary tale.  It was written for our learning and as an example.  People who had been called and chosen by God face real spiritual consequences if they live self-willed lives.  Take note:

1. Samson’s self-indulgent ways left him shaved, shorn, blinded and enslaved.
2. He became callous and jaded, insensitive to the stirring of the Holy Spirit who at first moved him.
3. He gave occasion for the enemies of Israel to blaspheme God: the Philistines held a party to celebrate their victory over Samson.  They boasted that because they had captured and humiliated God’s champion, their god Dagon had scored a major victory against Jehovah.
4. Samson killed more Philistines by his death than by his life.  This means that his potential did not produce the result of “godly” success.
5. Samson missed the point:  at his death, he had asked God for strength to mount a last effort to defeat the Philistines.  But he asked for the chance not for any other reason than that he wanted to be avenged because the Philistines had plucked out both his eyes.
6. Samson died without repenting.  He failed to fulfill the task for which he had been born, chosen and groomed all his life long.  He missed the mark, he fell short.

So what does all this mean?  Do this mean that God can be pretty mean when we don’t do what He wants?  Not exactly.  God is not a bully.

It means that we can be saved, and yet “suffer loss:” it means that we can be in heaven but we won’t have rewards because we did not do what pleased God.  We can be accepted by God and yet serve him unacceptably.  We can be accepted by God but live lives that are unacceptable or unapproved and unpleasing to God.

To those of us who think that Christianity is merely a “get-out-of-hell” pass, think again.  We were saved for a purpose.  The purpose of God in saving sinners is so that those sinners will be his sons.  God works in every believer’s life so that at the end of his life, that believer will be conformed to the image of God’s first-born Son, Jesus Christ who pleases God the Father well in everything he does.

Since God is our Father and we are his adopted sons, God will discipline us.  God will deal with us as with sons, especially if we are wayward sons.  Christianity is not a privilege, it is an accountability.  Brethren, let us serve God acceptably with reverence and with godly fear. Or, we will live and die like Samson, a sad tale of a broken promise, a story of the wasted life of a wunderkind.

“Wasted years, wasted years, Oh, how foolish.  When I walked on in darkness and fear.  Turn around, turn around, God is calling, He’s calling you from a life of wasted years.”  That’s a song my mother sang to me as a child whenever she told me the story of Samson.