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Anger and contempt are the twin scourges of the earth. Mingled with greed and sexual lust (to be discussed later), these bitter emotions form the poisonous brew in which human existence stands suspended. Few
Filthy language and name calling are always an expression of contempt. The current swarm of filthy language floats upon the sea of contempt in which our society is now adrift.
We do not control outcomes and are not responsible for them, but only for our contribution to them. Does our heart long for reconciliation?
To be of a kindly or favorable mind toward an adversary or anyone else does not mean to do what they demand. It means to be genuinely committed to what is good for them, to seek their well-being. This may even require that we not give in to them.
Jesus’ teaching here is that a person who cultivates lusting in this manner is not the kind of person who is at home in the goodness of God’s kingdom.
One is not in love but in lust, which glorifies itself as something deeper in order to have its way.
Intimacy is the mutual mingling of souls who are taking each other into themselves to ever increasing depths. The truly erotic is the mingling of souls. Because we are free beings, intimacy cannot be passive or forced. And because we are extremely finite, it must be exclusive.
Yet intimacy is a spiritual hunger of the human soul, and we cannot escape it. This has always been true and remains true today. We now keep hammering the sex button in the hope that a little intimacy might finally dribble out. In vain.
In charting one’s course in life, it is important never to forget that many things that cannot be called wrong or evil are nevertheless not good for us.
The terminology of 5:28 is quite clear if we will but attend to it, and many translations do get it right. The Greek preposition pros and the dative case are used here. The wording refers to looking at a woman with the purpose of desiring her. That is, we desire to desire. We indulge and cultivate desiring because we enjoy fantasizing about sex with the one seen.
It is the purposeful entertaining and stimulation of desire that Jesus marks as the manifestation of a sexually improper condition of the soul.
The mutilated stump could still have a wicked heart. The deeper question always concerns who you are, not what you did do or can do. What would you do if you could?19 Eliminating bodily parts will not change that.
They are to become “one flesh,” one natural unit, building one life, which therefore could never lose or substitute for one member and remain a whole life (Matt. 19:5; Gen. 2:24).
To begin with, he accepts the Mosaic exception of “uncleanness,” which may have covered a number of things but chiefly referred to adultery (Matt. 5:32; 19:8–9).
Rather, it is the hardness of the human heart that Jesus cites as grounds for permitting divorce in case of adultery. In other words, the ultimate grounds for divorce is human meanness.
Divorce, if it were rightly done, would be done as an act of love. It would be dictated by love and done for the honest good of the people involved.
The fifth contrast of the two rightnesses concerns retaliation for harm done. The wrongs in question are clearly personal injuries, not institutional or social evils. How do we know that? It is clear from the parts of the old law referred to. Therefore the application of this particular passage to war and other social evils, by Tolstoy and others, which has done much damage to the understanding of Jesus’ teaching, is simply a misreading.
But Paul is plainly saying—look at his words—that it is love that does these things, not us, and that what we are to do is to “pursue love” (1 Cor. 14:1). As we “catch” love, we then find that these things are after all actually being done by us. These things, these godly actions and behaviors, are the result of dwelling in love.
He calls us to him to impart himself to us. He does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love.
kingdom—“the range of God’s effective will,” as we have described it—and back into the barren “righteousness”
not are we seen doing a good deed, but are we doing a good deed in order to be seen.
is intelligent conversation about matters of mutual concern.
In apprenticeship to Jesus, this is one of the most important things we learn how to do. He teaches us how to be in prayer what we are in life and how to be in life what we are in prayer.
His remarkable life and ministry came from his relationship to his Father. Of course none of us have exactly the same relationship, but something of what we see in him is sure to come to us as we nourish ourselves on him and his kingdom.
That is to say, direct your actions toward making a difference in the realm of spiritual substance sustained and governed by God. Invest your life in what God is doing, which cannot be lost.
Of course this means that we will invest in our relationship to Jesus himself, and through him to God. But beyond that, and in close union with it, we will devote ourselves to the good of other people—those around us within the range of
our power to affect. These are among God’s treasures. “The Lord’s portion,” we are told, “is his people” (Deut. 32:9). And that certainly includes ourselves, in a unique and fundamental way. We have the care of our own souls and lives in a wa...
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Thus, to “lay up treasures in heaven” is to treasure all of these intimate and touching aspects of heaven’s life, all of what God is doing on earth. It is to do so in the order and manner heaven has indicated, and especially as we see it illumined in Jesus himself. And when we live in this way, our treasures are absolutely secure. All that we do counts and counts forever. It is preserved in our life within God’s eternal life.
In sixteenth-century Holland, the Mennonites were outlawed and, when caught, often executed. One of them, Dirk Willens, was being chased across an icefield when his pursuer broke through and fell in. In response to his cries for help, Willens returned and saved him from the waters. The pursuer was grateful and astonished that he would do such a thing but nevertheless arrested him, as he thought it his duty to do. A few days later Willens was executed by being burned at the stake in the town of Asperen. It was precisely his Christlikeness that brought on his execution.7
In other words, this is love, and everything that is intended for us by God is included within it.
In kingdom life we extend the respect to others that we would naturally hope others would extend to us.
First, we don’t undertake to correct unless we are absolutely sure of the sin.
Second, not just anyone is to correct others. Correction is reserved for those who live and work in a divine power not their own.
Third, the “correcting” to be done is not a matter of “straightening them out.” It is not a matter of hammering on their wrongness and on what is going to happen to them if they don’t change their ways. It is a matter of restoration.
Fourth, the ones who are restoring others must go about their work with the sure knowledge that they could very well do the same thing that the person “caught” has done, or even worse.
Anger and condemnation like vengeance, are safely left to God. We must beware of believing that it is okay for us to condemn as long as we are condemning the right things. It is not so simple as all that.
Shame seems most widespread and deepest among the very people who take rightness and goodness most seriously. It is a dimension of condemnation that reaches into the deepest levels of our souls. In shame we are self-condemned for being the person we are. It touches our identity and causes self-rejection. We feel ourselves to be a failure just for being the person we are. We wish to be someone else. But of course we cannot. We are trapped, and our life is made hopeless.
It is extremely rare that anyone who is condemned will respond by changing in the desired way. And those who can so respond are most likely to be spiritual giants already.
“the law of reciprocity of condemnation,”
The problem with pearls for pigs is not that the pigs are not worthy. It is not worthiness that is in question here at all, but helpfulness. Pigs cannot digest pearls, cannot nourish themselves upon them.
The point is not the waste of the “pearl” but that the person given the pearl is not helped.
What we are actually doing with our proper condemnations and our wonderful solutions, more often than not, is taking others out of their own responsibility and out of God’s hands and trying to bring them under our control.
we are always to respect other people as spiritual beings who are responsible before God alone for the course they choose to take of their own free will.
There is nothing indirect about this gentle creature. It is in this sense “harmless.” The importance scriptural teaching places on guilelessness is very great. One of the traits of the small child, greatest in the kingdom, is its inability to mislead. We are to be like that as adults.
that deep in our orientations of our spirit we cannot have one posture toward God and a different one toward other people. We are a whole being, and our true character pervades everything we do. We cannot, for example, love God and hate human beings.
Another way of saying this is that among those who live as Jesus’ apprentices there are no relationships that omit the presence and action of Jesus. We never go “one on one”; all relationships are mediated through him.
I never think simply of what I am going to do with you, to you, or for you. I think of what we, Jesus and I, are going to do with you,
Christian brotherhood is not an ideal that we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.
Laughter is the automatic human response to incongruity and incongruity is never lacking on the human scene, no matter how far advanced we may be into the kingdom. It is indelibly imprinted in our finitude.
I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, “Talking to God about what we are doing together.”
