***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: Salvation is an exceedingly comprehensive term, as it is used in the scriptures. It includes all sorts of things. As it is used in contemporary discourse, it is very confused. I would challenge you to try that out by going around asking people to talk about salvation, exactly what it is they mean. If you want somebody to get saved, okay, what are we going to get saved from? What are we going to get saved from? How are we going to get saved? Salvation must refer to being saved in something.
Or, alternatively, people talk about people being lost, right? Now, what is it for someone to be lost? Separated from God? What does that mean in particular? Like, if I’m lost out in the woods, I’m separated from home. But there are other ways you can describe it, like, for example, I don’t know where I’m going. When you’re lost, you don’t know where you’re going. A lot of people don’t know where they’re going. They may be in the middle of the woods, seated at a 12-course banquet, with all of the regalia that they might desire. But the banquet can’t replace the fact that they don’t know where they’re going. They don’t know where they are. They’re lost. So, lost, saved, what does it mean?
Now, I just sat down with my typewriter and flacked away here a bit to give you three different things which you’ll find running under the conception of salvation today. And I want to read over them, because I want us to be clear about what Jesus was talking about and about how he thought it might be realized.
We had a marvelous message here last Sunday. Most of you, I think, were here to enjoy this man, Dr. Kramer. And he spoke about love. And I think he just set our hearts on fire with what he had to say. It’s a beautiful thing. Would you? Well, I wish someone would take that thing. I wish you’d gone an hour and a half longer, don’t you? It was tremendous.
But now he leaves us with a problem. We’ve known for a long time, really, that love is the most vital factor in the well-being of people. Being loved and being able to love is the most vital factor in the well-being of people. We’ve known that for a long time. And yet the question comes, well, how is it done? How do we love one another? Is love a feeling in the heart? If it’s that, if it’s only that, if it’s not only that, how is it expressed? How are we going to live together in such a way as to really love one another? That’s what I want to concentrate on this morning. And I want to concentrate on it by giving you these three views of salvation to look at.
First of all, there is what I think is probably the most common view of salvation. And as I put it here, something in your life, for example, you have Christian parents, or you get baptized, or you do something or you make a decision, trips the lever in some heavenly mechanism or computer, and your name is added to a list at the pearly gates, and then you’ll be admitted when your number comes up. Your number will come up, you’ll go up, a man will look at this list, a computer printout maybe or whatever. Number one, five, six, seven, ten, three, whatever. Yeah, you’re on here. Okay, go on in.
Now, I put it in a purposely ridiculing fashion because I want to try to fix in your mind that model of salvation. The model of salvation is having primarily to do with getting into heaven when you die. Now, I want you not to misunderstand me, please. That is an important issue, believe me, that is an important issue. I would not for a moment suggest anything else. It is an important issue. The question, however, is how do we handle it? How do we handle it?
This question often comes up in the minds of many very serious religious people, and they will say, how do I know if I’m saved? How do I know if I’m right with God? Now, you can’t say, well, die and go on and find out. Why do you die and go on and find out? Well, really, that doesn’t answer their question. Their problem is one of here and now, isn’t it? They want to know now. They want to know now whether or not they’re going to get in by and by. And you can’t answer that question by saying, well, just wait and find out. Naturally, of course, they will find out at that time, but that’s not their problem. This question comes up. It’s very urgent for people. The more serious a person is about piety, the more serious that question becomes. I think it’s a question which many of you have asked. Many of you have spent time wondering about that. How do I know if I’m right? Now, I think you’re going to find it very difficult to answer that question if you have simply this first view of what salvation is.
Let me go on to the second one because there is more to the second one and yet it has the same drawbacks as the first in many ways. The second one you will see in many people who believe that, all right, you do trip the heavenly mechanism and get your name printed and all of that, but you get more. You get something in the present. As I put it here, plus certain more or less ecstatic experiences, for example, now and then you witness or as the saying now is, get high on Jesus, sing and shout and so on. All of it, however, has this problem of leaving you with the uncertainty of knowing what’s happened with you and where you stand because the general tenor of the life is still in touch. You’ll notice many people who have quite ecstatic experiences. Their lives are still filled full of harshness and despair, bitterness and just sin.
Now, the third view is the one which I believe that Jesus is teaching and is the one which I believe constitutes his good news about the kingdom of heaven. As I put it here, your life is taken over in every aspect by the spirit of, and then I quote these verses, the spirit of power. That’s so important. Power is so important. It’s been so abused in religion, you know, that it’s gotten a bad name. But power is so important. And of love and of a sound mind. Power, love and sound mind. This moves in and takes over the whole life. And then when that happens, at home, at work, at play, all is permeated by love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness and self-control. And it moves in and takes over. That’s eternal life.
Now, eternal life like that, you don’t have to just wonder whether or not you have it. And for many of us, if we can say, well, there are many areas where this hasn’t moved in, we can also say that there are many areas where it has moved in and it’s taking over in our lives. It’s taking over in our lives.
Now, in this process of taking over, things like decisions at particular times, various kinds of stages in life’s way will be very clear. But you can never replace growth with birth. You can never replace growth with birth. And one of the major afflictions of religion in our country today is the attempt to do just that. There’s a constant stress upon being born, being born, being born, being born, being born, being born, and maybe going back where you were when you were born and so on, over and over and over and over. And there is not the right stress on what the little letter of 2 Peter says, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You cannot replace growth with birth. You can’t do that.
Now then, when you have the growth, then all questions about where am I and where am I going are answered. We know where we’re going. Why do we know where we’re going? Because of what is in us. This is again why Paul says, Christ in you, Christ in you is the hope of glory. The hope of glory is not Christ on the cross. It’s not Christ at the right hand of the Father. It’s not Christ outside the tomb, risen from the dead. It is Christ in you. And when He’s in us, we know it.
And the little epistle of 1 John answers so well the question of how do we know where we stand. I know many of you have studied that. You remember the things like love of the brethren, the presence of Christ in us, and then finally just love. He that loveth is born of God, and he that loveth not knoweth not God, because God is love. The answer is simple when we look at it in this way. If we look at it in the early, these first two ways, it’s impossible.
Now, I want to point out that the main problem with the talk of love is abstractness. What does it mean to love? And it’s possible even to take these glorious passages like the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians and read those and hear about how love is all of these wonderful things, long stuff, doesn’t think He, doesn’t give up, and so on and so forth. And yet to miss what that would mean for us where we’re living. What does it mean for me at 23535 Lake Manor Drive in Chapsworth? Now, if I can’t get to that, I can sing songs about it, and I can talk big about it, and I might even get right happy about it. But if I can’t get to the point to where the know-how of love filters down to that address, I don’t know.
So this morning I want us to look at some passages from Jesus and His teachings about the how we are to receive the love of God in the junctures of our everyday life. And I’m going to start with a shocking passage. I hope you’ve heard it before, and I hope you’ve thought about it, and that’s Luke 14, the 12th through the 14th verses. This verse is typical of all of the verses I’m going to read this morning in the fact that it is so frightening that people come to look at it as something which is impossible or undesirable or just as something that’s kind of puzzling, you know? What could be mean by that?
So let’s look at that, Luke 14, and I’m tempted to read at greater length out of these marvelous passages in the middle of the Gospel of Luke, because the chapters 12 through 14 of the Gospel of Luke are to me among the most profound passages in all of Jesus’ teachings. But let’s just read these three verses. He’s been talking in the previous passage about humility, and he’s been talking about how when you go to a feast or a party, don’t take the place of honor, take the lower place. Now he teaches something else with reference to a feast. By the way, do you know where he was when he taught this? He was at a feast. He was at somebody’s house who had said, come to dinner. And then he laid all the heavy stuff on him. That was just terrible, because it was just like he was talking about where they were.
The first verse, and it came to pass as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day. They watched him. That’s where he is. He is in one of the chief Pharisees’ houses. Remember we’ve been talking about the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, how we must go beyond that to be in the kingdom of heaven.
Now then, let’s turn to the 12th verse. Then he said also, to him that bade him. In other words, he took his guests by the beard. I mean his host by the beard. He said now, when you make a feast at dinner or supper, don’t call your friends, nor your presence, neither thy kin nor thy rich neighbors, unless they also bid thee again. And a reckoning can’t be made. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. You give me a feast and I’ll give you a better one. You know that trade-off that goes on in personal religion and personal relations all the time. Even in the church we have such a hard time getting out of it, for example. You know, it’s funny that when we begin to move into the community of grace, one of the hardest things to do is to get out of that pattern of, gee, I’ve got to do something for you, you did something for me. Isn’t that true? And we have such a hard time getting beyond that. And sometimes we just wish, you know, sort of to take their hands off of us and say, please, please, don’t give me something, just accept what I’ve given you, and if you want to give to someone else, go do that. You don’t owe me anything because I did something for you.
Now Jesus is getting at the heart of this because this is at the heart of the religion of the Pharisees. When you make a supper, don’t call people who are just going to pay you back. When you make a feast, call the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind. Now why do you suppose he thought of those? Well, gee, if you do that, your name will appear in the social register. This grand person went out here and got all these poor people and sent them. No, the obvious reason is the simple straightforward one. These people needed food. They needed food. The poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind, they needed things. And the reason for giving them things is because they needed it.
Then thou shalt be blessed, because they cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the Jews. Now, a number of things need to be said very quickly here as reminders in order to avoid misinterpretations. First of all, Jesus is not saying, don’t ever have your friends over for supper. Let’s be very sure about that now. Just like when he says, blessed are the spiritually poverty-stricken, he’s not saying you’ve got to be a dimwhip to get in the kingdom of God. He’s saying some people like that are blessed, and he’s not saying you’ve got to go be persecuted and find someone to beat you up so that you’ll be blessed when he says, blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. And likewise here, he’s not laying that down. That’s not the way he teaches. He teaches by giving a perception into a situation, and he says, this is what it’s like. This is what it’s like. And sometimes it’s like this, and sometimes it’s like that.
Jesus never handed anyone a kind of general outline of the blessed life which you could take step by step, and why not? Because the way of law, the way of patterns which you cram your life into, will invariably kill the spirit which is most precious in you to God, the spirit of free giving out of love and out of your own understanding. Human life can’t be caught in those kinds of things, and Jesus teaches by way of paradox. Please always remember that. Jesus uses paradox very heavily, and this in fact is one case of it. A paradox is an extremely striking kind of negation which is thrown up to people to just sort of stun their mind. It’s a kind of shock treatment. You know what shock treatment is? You put these things in your nervous system and zap you, and it just tears up the organization of the nerves that’s been established by experience, and we need that in the spiritual realm. Though I must tell you, I think probably we never need it in the way it is used, but excuse me, that’s quite aside from the present point. A paradox is a kind of stunning of the mind, so that the mind can then back up and try to get a new hold on things. Jesus teaches that.
But among other things, what he’s saying is that sometimes you will meet a poor person, and instead of throwing him a quarter, you’ll bring him home and you’ll feed him and you’ll see what you can do for him. That’s right. Now, this is extremely threatening to many people, and so they just take this part of the Bible and they say, no, we can’t do that. And there’s a reason for that. And I want to come to that later because there’s a very legitimate reason for looking at these passages and saying, this can’t be, we can’t live with it. Jesus could not have meant that. There’s a very legitimate reason for which we have to deal with it. But first of all, let’s go on and read some other passages and then we’ll have some comments on them.
Let’s look at Luke 6. Now, this is very like the passage which you are concentrating on today in your study in Matthew. It is a parallel passage. And here, again, is a place where many people just shake their heads and say, this is impossible, we must just leave this out. But again, that’s because of a misunderstanding as to what Jesus is doing.
Jesus says here in the 27th verse of the 6th chapter, I say unto you which hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and unto him that smiteth me, unto him that takes away your coat, let’s put that, to him that takes away your shirt or your suit coat, give him also your overcoat or forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee. I must stop on that because again, this is the sort of thing which is terrifying. Give to him that asketh of thee, someone walks up and says give me something and you just give it to him. Give to him that asketh of thee and of him that taketh away thy goods, take them not again. And as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise.
Now note the reasoning in the passage that follows. If you love them which love you, what thank have you? For sinners also love those that love them. And if you do good to them which do good to you, what thank have you? For sinners also do even the same. And if you lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thank have you? For sinners also lend to sinners to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies and do good, oh and here comes a big one, and lend hoping for nothing again. And your reward shall be great, then ye shall be the children of the highest, for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
I really hope that you are being able to follow along as I read these and look at these words, because we have to make some kind of decision if we are to be followers and partakers of Jesus and of the really good news which he brought into the world as to what we’re going to do about these kinds of things. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
And again in the thirty-eighth verse, give, give, and it shall be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over. That’s pretty good, good measure. Good measure means what? Do you know what a baker’s dozen is? Thirteen, right? That’s good measure. Shaken together. Now if you put a grain or something in a bushel and you don’t shake it down, you get a lot of air, right? So if you want to really give a bushel, you shake that down, you shake it together, and then you just run it over. That’s how men will give to you. And the reason why many people have nothing is because they give nothing. They give nothing. Jesus says, give, give.
Now note the law that he states, give and it shall be given unto you. Give and it shall be given unto you. See, many people have this all turned around because they go at life saying, give me, and then they wonder why nothing is given to them. Jesus says, give and it shall be given unto you. How will it be given unto you? Good measure, pressed down, shaken together. You’ll get up and stomp on the bushel, shake it around, run it over, and hand it to you.
Now I didn’t say that. Don’t go out here and say, Dallas Willard said, give. I didn’t say it. Jesus said it. And if you’ve got an argument, I wish you would argue with him. He’s not talking about giving to churches. He’s talking about giving to people, and that includes churches, when it’s right. He’s not talking about the offering place. He’s talking about your children, and your wife, and your husband. He’s talking about your parents, and he’s saying, give to them, give to them. Give and it will be given back to you. That’s the law. This is the law not in the sense of some principle which stands over you and says, do this and thou shalt live. It’s the law in the sense of a way of life which has its own strength. It’s a law like the laws of a bird’s wings, allow it to fly, and not to be a bird. Give.
All right, let’s look at Matthew 25. Here we have a scene of judgment, whatever the exact setting is very difficult to determine, and there are many different interpretations of just exactly where this is, but I don’t think this will at all bother us in seeing the main point which is relevant here. Jesus says, beginning, let’s begin in the thirty-fourth verse, then shall the king say unto them at his right hand, come ye blessed of my father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. There’s something better coming, friends. We have a present kingdom, but there’s something even better coming. Prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
Now look at the reasoning, and whatever your doctrine may be about the relationship between works and grace, just make sure it doesn’t mislead you about the fundamental fact that he’s pointing out. Why are you to come in? Answer. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was stranger, and you took me in. I was out of clothes, and you gave me some. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came unto me.
I note what the righteous are going to say, because you remember the statement in the sixth chapter of Matthew that when we do our own, we are not to let our right hand know what our left hand does, and this is beautiful here because it just illustrates the effect of that on the light. Notice what he said, Lord, when did we see you coming, thirsty, when, stranger, when? Have you noticed, as you read this passage, the elemental character of the giving, food, drink, clothing, shelter, encouragement? I mean, what do you do for a person when you go through them in prison? Elemental encouragement in a bad situation. What do you do for a person when you go through them when they’re sick? You’re not a doctor. You take them a bunch of flowers to get their allergy going or something, and that’s about the best you can do. The basic thing is you go and you be with them and you encourage them, the elemental character of all the things.
Now notice further the elemental character of it. In as much as you did it, come to one of the least, one of the least. If you remember that elsewhere, Jesus says, if you give a cup of cold water to a child in my name, and that doesn’t mean you know it when you give a cup of water to Jesus. It doesn’t mean it. It means you do it because of what Jesus has done for you on behalf of his cause. If you give that cup of cold water, notice the smallness of it, will you?
Now will you remember the memory verse which I asked you to do for today? Many shall say into that, to me in that day, Lord, Lord, haven’t we cast out devils in your name? Haven’t we prophesied in your name and done many wonderful works? And what’s he going to say? I never knew you. I never knew you. Not everyone that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. What is the will of my Father which is in heaven? It is that we meet the needs of those who are around us to the best of our ability. That where we find hungry people, we feed them, and that hunger may be spiritual, it may be physical. That where we find people in need of clothing, we give. That where we find people who are in prison, and there are all kinds of prisons, aren’t there? The stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. That’s so true in both directions. In other words, you can be in prison and not be in prison, and you can be out of prison and really be locked in.
I’m going very slowly over this because I’m so concerned to just give you what he says here and try as much as possible to keep my opinions out of it, though I’m sure I don’t succeed at that and I’m not altogether concerned to succeed completely, but I am concerned that when you go out, when you go out, you know that there’s something here that I didn’t say. Will you remember that?
When we go up before the great king, the question is going to be, did you feed the hungry? Did you give drink to those who were first? Did you visit people? Our visit isn’t good enough because it makes us think of going in some parlor and sitting with a cup of tea on our knee and chit-chatting about something or other. Are you really with people? Can you give yourself to them in situations of need? Just give yourself. See, if they’re hungry, you can give them food, but if they’re sick or in their prisons, the only thing that you can give is just you. Can you give yourself?
It is heartbreaking to realize that there are people who will show more affection to a stray dog that comes through this building than they would show to people that they sit by Sunday after Sunday. I’ve known people who would show more affection to their dogs than they will to their children. Excuse me, but you know it’s so. They’re scared to death to be with them, to really get involved with them, non-manipulatively, not to go in there and straighten them out, make sure that they get rightly programmed and all of that, but just be with them because it’s true, isn’t it? Tragedies happen, and if the stray dog gets out of hand, you can always kick them out the door, but if you really identify with your child and your child gets involved in tragedy, it isn’t just his tail in the crack, it’s yours too, and we all know that, and that’s why we withdraw from others.
That’s why there’s so little visiting. We know that if we give to another, we become partly responsible for that other. Then all of the issues of our well-being, our reputation, our plans, they get involved with that child or with that neighbor or with that husband or wife or whoever it may be, they’re involved. That’s what fellowship means. You remember, I told you a long time ago, fellowship means to be in the same boat with somebody. If you’re in the boat with somebody and the boat that somebody is in goes down, you go with it. That calls for a kind of trust in God, which will allow you to get in that boat and believe that God can save both you and them, no matter what comes. That’s what visiting involves. friendship means to really be with people, to get involved with them for good or for bad, for better or for worse, and to trust God to bail you out.
Now the passage I ask you most to concentrate on this morning was in the fifth chapter of Matthew. I want to just read this, and I want to make some comments on why it is so hard to come to grips with this. Those of you who are ignorant of such things, for example, as the early Quaker movement or the early Wesleyan movement, or the early Christian movement, a little further back, but there was one one time ago, but if you just pick up George Thorpe’s journal, try to get one of the less abridged editions of it, or any account of the early Quakers and see how they threw their lives in with one.
Jesus said, you have heard it hath been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. See there’s that commerce again, this is the negative side of it. Positive side was I give you a dinner and you give me a dinner. Now you take my tooth, I’ll take your tooth. You take my eye, I’ll take your eye. Your ox gores my ox, you’ve got to give me your ox. Oh commerce, swap out. Sometimes this is called justice. Sometimes it’s called justice. And there is, it’s better than nothing, believe me. And before we scorn it, we’d better realize that one of the great steps in human progress, in human history, was at the time when the lex talionis, the law of retaliation, was incorporated into the codes of human beings. Because there was for the first time then an appeal to something other than the simple law of revenge, which you still find in societies where a few are carried on. But Jesus says there’s something more.
Don’t resist evil. Don’t resist evil. Now he is not talking about evil in general, he’s talking about someone doing it to you. He’s not saying, for example, don’t speak the truth, don’t resist evil by talking about what is right and good, he’s not saying that. Not saying don’t resist evil by trying to persuade people to live in a right way, a good way. He’s not saying. He’s talking about something very specific.
Whoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Any man sue you at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak. There’s a very specific command on that. For example, if you look in Exodus 22, 26 through 27, you’ll see that you could not, if a man had an overcoat, and he came to you and said, I want to borrow your plow, and I’ll leave my overcoat in pledge, you were not permitted to keep that overnight. And the reason this shows you the beauty and tenderness in the old law. The reason is he might get cold at night. He needs that to cover him up and keep him warm. That sort of thing just feels, I don’t know what it does to you, the beauty of that sort of thing. You see the reasoning, and you see the spirit of love that’s in the old law. You can’t keep that man’s coat overnight. He comes back and says, I broke your plow, give him till sundown to get it fixed, and if he doesn’t get it fixed, you give him his coat so he won’t freeze and get cold at night. Isn’t that beautiful?
Jesus says, man sues you for that cloak that the old law gave you a right to take back even though you couldn’t keep your pledge, you give him your coat, you give him that cloak also. If so ever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. A Roman officer had a right on the highways of all of the countries where they were in dominion. A Roman officer had a right to compress any citizen in service for one mile, whether to carry a message one mile or to carry a burden, a sack of grain or whatever, or to lead a mule or whatever, they could compress them into service for one mile. And he says, so too.
Now remember, he’s not giving laws, he’s not saying, measure that second mile out carefully and at the end, drop it and walk off. Just like he’s not saying, once the guy has slapped you on the other cheek, give him the old one too. He’s not saying. He’s not giving laws, he’s giving perceptions into the spirit of the kingdom of God.
Give unto him that asketh of thee and him that would borrow. Now the word here refers borrowing at interest. This is a kind of commercial loan, commercial at least in the sense that it permitted usury or interest from him that would borrow. Don’t turn him away.
You have heard that it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, the person who lives next to you, your cultural equivalent. That’s what he’s talking about. You’ll notice it contrasts your neighbor with your enemy. It was assumed that any person who was not your cultural equivalent was your enemy. We don’t do that anymore, but it used to be done that way, right? Well anyway, that’s what he’s talking about. He’s saying, go outside of the circle and love those people who look differently than you do, who are different in all sorts of shades of color, race, and culture and so on. Love them. Love your enemy. And if they’re really your enemy, that is, they really come after you, love them still.
I say to you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you. And pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. I’ve had people say to me, young people especially in universities, they’ll come to me and they’ll say, what’s all this fuss about being Christian? I can’t tell any difference between Christians and non-Christians. I always say to them, do you know people that love their enemies, that bless those that curse them, that do good to them, that hate them, and pray for them that despitefully use them? No, I don’t know anyone like that. Because if they know people like that, they know someone who’s very different from other people. And this is where people are who live in the kingdom of God.
If you love them which love you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans do the same? Isn’t it nice that Matthew would record that? He was a publican. Right. Matthew was publican. The publicans do the same. Publicans were thought to be people who were governed hard and fast by the rule of commerce. They were in it for money. They found someone who loved them could give them something, they’d give to them. And if you salute your brethren only, that is if you speak kindly with respect and with regard only to your brothers, that is those of your kind, those who are in your tribe or your cave or whatever, do not even the publicans do so.
Be therefore perfect. How are we to be perfect? Perfect in knowledge, in love. That’s what it’s talking about, isn’t it? It’s not talking about being perfect in knowledge, not talking about being perfect in power. It’s talking about being perfect in the way in which our Father in heaven is perfect in just this respect. He makes his Son to shine on the just and on the unjust. He’s kind to the evil. And to those who are out of the way, he’s merciful. And that’s how we’re to be.
Now I want to speak very briefly about why people are afraid of these things and why I’m afraid of them. May I put it that way instead of saying you’re afraid of them because I’m afraid of them. I think I’ve learned how to deal with that fear in some respects and how to overcome it. But it is a fearful thing to love another human being. It’s not fearful to talk about it or sing about it. But here we’re talking about it in all of its concreteness.
I must tell you that I think that the reason why we are afraid to do this is simply we read these as laws as to what we are always to do under every circumstance. And reading them in that way, we see no way to limit it. And what do we say? Well, suppose someone comes to me and asks me to tell a lie for them. It says, Give unto him that asketh of thee, shall I therefore give him a lie? No. Because the limits of all of these teachings of Jesus are built into the simple principle of love thy neighbor as thyself.
Now very briefly, the limit of love is at the point where it becomes destructive. If by giving to someone who asketh of me, I destroy my family, I’m not loving, I’m being driven by something else. And it is so important to understand this because the motivations here are all important. If I go to the point of taking people into my home and tell my wife, I’m to all, I’ve gone too far, I must work that out in some other way. If I am concerned to be able to take people in, for example, then I should plan. I should try to find out what would be right for James, for Johnny, for Becky. I should try to find out what would not turn me into a burden to others.
Now what drives us beyond this is a lot of guilt, bad feelings, for example, very often when someone comes to us and asks something out of policy, immediately we’re put on the spot. And immediately the question comes now. Not what would be good for this person, but how am I going to come out of this shack? How am I going to come out of this room, you know, smelling like a rose as they say. That’s not the issue, dear friends. That is not the issue. I’m not to give in order to prove something about me.
I also am not to give in order to feast upon gratitude. And if the person is ungrateful, that was the point of Jesus saying that God is kindly unthankful. Remember the story where Jesus healed 10 lepers, only one came back, and that was a summary. How about that? A Samaritan was the only one who came back. Jesus said, where are the nine? He didn’t suddenly press a button and give them leprosy over again. Why did he heal them? Well, because it’s a bad thing to have leprosy. Just like you’re supposed to feed people because they’re hungry. And you’re supposed to give to yourself to people because they’re lonely. What more reason do you need than that they’re alone?
Years ago when I began preaching, I must have been 18 years old. You can judge what sort of wisdom must have rested upon my brow at that age. And so it was not without reason that most of my preaching was done on streets and in jailhouses. Needless to say, you have a captive audience in a jailhouse, don’t you? And we would go there and we would have singing before. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the old song, No Never Alone. Nearly every time those people got so sick of that song, because nearly every time those dear men let’s say, never alone, they won’t sing never alone, no never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone, but they were lonely.
You’re not going to meet many people today who aren’t lonely. But when the question comes up, what can we give to people? Let’s be able to take a realistic look at the things that they need. Let’s find out where they’re really hurting. And then let’s have the courage to trust God to keep us safe within the law of love, to do what is good. And let’s let it get so far down into us that we won’t even know what we’re doing. We just do it automatically. And that’s how we learn to love, in the junctures of day by day life. That’s where we experience the reality of the good news about the King of God.
I hope you will take these passages that we’ve read today and I hope you’ll take them home this afternoon and you’ll get alone, sit down and look at them and ask yourself, what am I doing here? Would you do that? I know that you and everyone here is concerned about this church and this group. If your concern means anything, let’s do what I’ve asked you to do. Let’s do it today. Maybe do it every day this week and you’ll see something happen.
Lord, we are thankful for this record that we’ve read and we pray that you will teach us how to trust you as we live with others.