“The Secret of true Christian Living” OUR Lord Jesus Christ tells us in Matt. 5:43,44 to love our enemies, because that is exactly what God does: “that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain to the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45) Some commentators and preachers have misinterpreted this to mean that the love of God is universal absolutely, and that it does not matter whether a man sins or not. Everybody is going to heaven because God is love; and, because God is love, He can never punish. But this is a complete denial of the Scriptures from the beginning to end. God punished Cain, and the ancient world of Noah in the deluge, He punished the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; He punished the children of Israel for their recalcitrance. The whole teaching of the New Testament by Christ is that there will be final judgment, that, finally all the impenitent will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:15) where “their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:44; see also Isa. 66:24) Thus there is no element of contradiction in the Scriptures.
This granted, it becomes necessary to recognize that, ultimately, the judicial element is confirmed by the fact that in this world, God does indeed cause His sun to rise on the evil and the good men, He blesses those who hate Him, and He does send rain upon those who defy Him. But at the same time, He announces to them that unless they repent, they shall finally be destroyed.
Our Lord Jesus, is here counteracting the perverted teaching of the Pharisees and the Scribes (“Love your neighbours and hate your enemies”) with His own teaching: “But I say unto you, love your enemies”. Then as an illustration He say ‘Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you’. This is a clear definition of what the attitude of the Christian should be towards other people. In Matt. 5:38-42, the injunction was in the negative form. The position was that of a Christian man subjected to insults by others. They struck him a blow and inflicted injury on him. And our Lord says that you must not hit back. “ye have heard that it has been said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that you resist not evil” (Matt. 5:38). That is the negative. Here the Lord goes on the positive and it is, of course, the very climax of Christian living. Here, He leads the Christian on to one of the greatest and must glorious attributes that can be found even in the teachings of Christ.
The principle that should guide and govern the disposition of the Christian is this simple and yet profound attitude toward ourselves; that a man should be “dead” to himself, “dead” to self interest, “dead” to a concern about self. And, our Lord goes further to teach that the Christian must positively love those who hate him and do many wrong things to him, and even love his enemies.
The Christian ought to see this in the form of a number of principles. It is the most exalted teaching that can be found anywhere, for it ends on the note: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). It all concerns this matter of love. It proclaims that in this world of time, faced by the problems and difficulties of people, and many things that are constantly challenging, the Christian should behave as God behaves, and should be like Him, and to treat others as God treats them.
The first principle for action, is that our treatment of others must never depend on what they are or what they do to us. It must be entirely controlled and governed by our view of them and of their condition. This is clearly the principle Christ enunciates. This is evidenced in the fact that God sends rain upon the evil, foul and unjust man, and their crops are fructified like the crops of the good man; they have certain benefits in life and experience; what is called “common grace”. God does not bless only the efforts of a Christian farmer; at the same time, He blesses the efforts of the unjust, the evil, the unrighteous farmer. God does not deal with them according to what they do to Him. God’s action is governed by His own love which is absolutely disinterested. In other words, it does not depend on any external force or condition, it is in spite of man’s sinfulness or otherwise, “for God so love the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
The whole secret of living this kind of Christian life is that the Christian should be utterly detached. He must be detached from others in the sense that his behaviour is not governed by what they do, But still more important, he should be detached from himself, for until a man is detached from himself, he will never be detached from what others do to that self. As long as a man is living for himself, he is sensitive, watchful and jealous, he is envious and is therefore always reacting immediately to what others do. He is in intimate contact with others, the only way to detach yourself from what others do to you, is that first of all, detach yourself from yourself.
The Christian is a man who is taken out of this present evil world. He is placed apart and is living on a higher level. He belongs to a different kingdom. He is a new man, a new creation. Because of this, he sees everything differently and therefore reacts in a different manner, he is nolonger of the world. He is in a position of detachment. He is sanctified unto the Lord.
Christ, seems in this, to say: you can become like God in this respect, that you will nolonger be governed exclusively by what other people do to you; you have something within you that determines your conduct and behaviour. The Christian ought to realize that one of the most tragic things about man, is that he allows his life to be governed by other people and by what they do to him and think about him. This is one of the things that make life very wretched. Now, says Jesus in effect, you must get out of that condition, your love must become such that you will no longer be governed and controlled by what people say. Your life must be governed by a new principle in yourself a new principle of love. The Christian who achieves this will certainly have a new outlook and see people and what they do in a different way.
God looks down from heaven upon the world and sees all the sin and shame, but He sees it as something that results from the activities of Satan. There is a sense in which He sees the unjust man in a different way. He is concerned about him and about his good and welfare and He therefore causes the sun to shine upon him and sends the rain upon him. The Christian must learn this and do likewise. He must learn to look at other people who wrong him and see them as victims of Satan, who are governed by the god of this world and are his helpless victims. If he see them this way, he excuses them as hell-bound sinners for whom he must do all he can save. God looked at this sinful, arrogant, foul world and sent His only begotten son into it to save it, because He saw its condition, and did it for the good of all mankind. The Christian must learn to do this for others, he must have a positive concern for their good. If he knows in his heart, something of this compassion for the lost and sinful and those who are perishing, then he will be able to do it.
This raises the fundamental question of why should the Christian do this for an unbeliever? There is a great deal of sentimentalizing about this issue. Some hold that the Christian should do all this to make more friends. It is often the basis of pacifism to be nice to others in order that they in return might be nice to us. Of course this does not actually work out as expected. The Christian should not do good in expectation for a return of good from his beneficiary. The Christian must ignore the modern or social psychological principles of trying to draw out of people what we expect of them by being silent on their wrongs in the false hope to change them psychologically. The Christian’s sympathy and help to an erring lost man should be primarily aimed at displaying to such a victim, the love of God which is reflected to the victim from the Christian’s love attributes without looking for a spark of divinity in the victim’s heart which could be fanned into a flame!.
(To be continued)
