CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS - Oswald Chambers
Christian grace comprehends the whole man. ” Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” Salvation means not only a pure heart, an enlightened mind, a spirit put right with God, it means that the whole of man is comprehended in the manifestation of the marvelous power and grace of God, the whole man, body, soul and spirit is brought into fascinating captivity to the Lord Jesus Christ. An incandescent mantle illustrates the meaning, if the mantle is not rightly adjusted, only one bit of it glows, but get the mantle adjusted exactly, and when the light comes the whole thing is comprehended in a blaze of light; and every bit of our being is to be absorbed until we are one glow with the comprehensive goodness of God. ” The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” Some of us have goodness in spots.
The limit to the manifestation of the grace of God in me is my body, and the whole of my body. We can understand the need of a pure heart, of a mind rightly adjusted to God and a spirit indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but what about the body? That is the margin of righteousness in me. We make a divorce between a clear intellectual understanding of truth and its practical outcome. Jesus never made such a divorce; He takes no notice of our fine intellectual conceptions unless their practical outcome is shown in reality.
There is a great snare in the capacity to understand a thing clearly and to exhaust its power by stating it. Over much earnestness blinds the life to reality, earnestness becomes our god. We bank on the earnestness and zeal with which things are said and done, and after a while we find that the reality is not there, the power and presence of God are not being manifested, there are relationships at home or in business or in private that show when the veneer is scratched that we are not real. To say things well is apt to exhaust the power of doing them, so that a man has often to curb the expression of a thing with his tongue and turn it into action, otherwise his gift of facile utterance will prevent his doing the things he says.
” Therefore, all things whatsoever ye that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Our Lord’s use of this maxim is positive, not negative. Do to others whatsoever ye would that they should do to you a very different thing from not doing to others what you don’t want them to do to you. What would I like other people to do to me? Well, says Jesus, do that to them; don’t wait for them to do it to you. The Holy Ghost will kindle your imagination to picture many things you would like others to do to you, it is His way of telling you what to do to them ” I would like people to give me credit for the generous motives I have; ” well, give them credit for having generous motives. ” I would like that people should not pass harsh judgments on me,” well, don’t pass harsh judgments on them. ” I should like other people to pray for me; ” well, pray for them. The measure of my growth in grace is my attitude towards other people. ” Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thyself,” says Jesus. Satan comes in as an angel of light and says but you must not think about yourself. The Holy Spirit will make you think about yourself, because that is His way of educating you as to how to deal with others. He makes you picture what you would like other people to do to you, and then says Now you go and do those things to them. This verse is Our Lord s measure for practical ethical conduct. ” Whatsoever ye that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We always look for justice in this world, but there is no such thing as justice. Jesus says Never look for justice, but never cease to give it. The stamp all through Our Lord’s teaching is that of the impossible unless He can make me all over again, and that is what He came to do. He came to give any man a new heredity to which His teaching will apply.
Jesus Christ came to make the great laws of God in Carnate in human life, that is the miracle of God s grace. We are to be written epistles, “known and read of all men.” There is no room whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make my actual life in keeping with my religious profession.
In our study of the Sermon on the Mount it would be like a baptism of light to allow the principles of Jesus to soak right down to our very make-up. His statements are not put up as standards for us to attain; God re-makes us, puts His Holy Spirit in us, then the Holy Spirit applies the principles to us and enables us to work them out by His guidance.