Monthly Archives: September 2009

I Have Not Always Obeyed This Command

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I Have Not Always Obeyed This Command
via Desiring God Blog on 9/28/09

(Author: Jon Bloom)
“Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42).
I confess, I have not always obeyed this command.
I’m a veteran urban-dweller. Having lived in an inner city neighborhood for 18 years, I’ve encountered many beggers and borrowers. Some I discerned as cons I have called out or waved off. Some I have hired to do work. Others I’ve given to because I felt the conviction of this text.
I’ve thought a lot about this command of Jesus over the years. I’ve discussed it with many. I think I know all the major reasons why not to give when someone asks. You don’t want to encourage deception. You don’t want to feed a chemical addiction. You don’t want to contribute to someone’s cycle of poverty. And there are many others.
But still this text unnerves and convicts me.
The reason is that Jesus doesn’t give this command in the context of addressing how I can best facilitate transformation in someone else. He is telling me how I should respond to those who are making demands on me, either from explicitly evil motives or just plain out of their difficult situation. He is telling me how I ought to respond even when being taken advantage of.
Do not resist the evil person, he says. Let him slap you twice. (v. 39)
Give him more than he is suing you for. (v. 40)
Do more than he is forcing you to do. (v. 41)
Give to those who ask. (v. 42)
Love your enemy. (v. 44)
Jesus is telling me to actively show kindness and radical generosity toward those who hate me or who are seeking to take advantage of me.
Really, Jesus? Isn’t that rewarding sinful, or at least unhealthy, behavior?
Of course, I can think of Biblical examples that illustrate when it seems right to resist or flee an evil person in situations of theft, deception, abuse, persecution, war, etc. So when the Word speaks, I must listen carefully, and I must weigh all of his words.
But from the words Jesus speaks here, I think it applies more often and more broadly than I want it to. He does not let me off the hook easily. He tests my heart with such radical love. And in my heart I see my selfish, unloving impulses that do not want to part with my money, possessions, time, or convenience for needy or evil people. And I have a ready arsenal of noble-sounding rationales that conceal my sin, almost from myself.
What Jesus is calling me to is gospel love. It’s the love that drove him to die for me with when I was still a weak, ungodly, sinful enemy of his (Romans 5:6-10). There is something about such over-the-top, radically generous love that is so different from the way the world loves that it reflects the Father’s love for sinners. It’s why Jesus calls us also to costly love. It is both an expression and picture of the gospel.
Pray for me. I have an opportunity in my life right now to obey this command, which is why I’m wrestling with this text again. Pray that I will love the way I have been loved.

Death-Defying Faith for Gospel Ministry

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A Death Defying Gospel - by Denny Burk

I was stunned last week when one of my colleagues told me that he didn’t care whether or not he died from Swine Flu. We were talking about the flu season and how the much ballyhooed Swine Flu might affect our campus, and he was simply not very concerned about it. It’s not that he believed the Flu would miss us. He actually felt that things would be okay even if the Lord allowed the worst to happen to him—death.

On Monday, I got to hear another colleague preach to Boyce College students on Acts 20:24 (listen here). He told the story of some missionary pilots that he knew who faced the daily danger of crashing into a tree-line near their runway. The pilots said that they were okay with this and expressed no anxiety whatsoever about dying. They had a ministry to fulfill, and they believed that Jesus would meet them on the other side.

Two colleagues, one message. If you really trust God with the kind of faith that the Bible commends, there is courage and boldness in the direst of circumstances. It is the perspective of the apostle Paul in Acts 20:24: “I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, in order that I may finish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.” Paul didn’t live his life calculating how he might avoid danger in his ministry. Instead, he says that he holds loosely his own security so that he can preach the gospel—a line of work that for him was fraught with danger. There would have been no way for him to preach the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome if he had been fearing for his life. The success of his ministry depended on death-defying faith.

And that’s the message that has landed on me with power this past week. Gospel ministry depends on death-defying faith. Which is another way of saying that gospel ministry depends on resurrection-faith. As Paul has said elsewhere, “We had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9). There’s no need to fear death if you believe that God will raise you up immortal on the other side. This truth is what enabled Paul to say that death was “gain” (Phil. 1:21) This truth is the ground of courage, and it is the only proper basis for gospel ministry. Anything less than that is powerless and unbiblical.

Praise God for colleagues who recently reminded me of this. As I ask the Lord to seal this truth anew to my own heart, I pray that he will seal it to yours as well.