A Great Moral Teacher?

Divine love calls us to lay down our lives for more abuse if necessary. They strike us on the cheek; we offer the other cheek also. They take away our coats; we give them the shirts off our backs too. They beg from us; we give to everyone who asks without requiring payback. When we walk down streets populated with beggars, we should reach the end of the street penniless. When we love our enemies, we give ourselves up for them.

The world’s morality says, “Love your friends and hate your enemies.” The Great Moral Teacher says, “Love your enemies and give them even more.”

Why love this way? What’s the rationale?

First, we should love this way because it’s how we would want to be treated. “Just as you want others to do for you, do the same for them” (v. 31). Love puts us in the place of the mistreated, the oppressed, and the marginalized. It calls us to imagine that state for ourselves and then behave accordingly.

Second, we should love this way to earn a great reward and prove we are God’s children. Jesus teaches this in verses 35-36. As Christians, we want the world to know that we serve the Most High God. We want the world to know that we know him. The main way God intends the world to know this is by our love for one another (John 13:34-35) and our love for all others—including our enemies. When we love this way, we live out the family resemblance. When we act like our Father, it pleases him and he rewards us.

Loving our enemies seems utterly unnatural and impossible until we consider examples of it. Every January we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. No social movement of recent history has embodied this sacrificial, redemptive view of love like the non-violent protests of the Civil Rights Movement. People sometimes forget the Civil Rights Movement was a religious movement, a Christian movement. It was built on this very call to love. Ordinary men and women willingly suffered at the hands of their enemies—at lunch counters, in jail cells, from dogs and water hoses, lynchings and beatings—all without retaliating, all returning love for brutality. Whatever else we may think of Dr. King, he surely understood and practiced love in a way that looks a lot like Jesus’s teaching here. Dr. King and the ordinary persons who marched with him put most of us to shame when it comes to loving as Jesus commanded. We see the effect today. We could not imagine how different U.S. society would be right now if so many had not embraced the radical call to love. This kind of love transforms society. It changes the hearts of both the oppressed and the oppressor, the victim and the victimizer.

There remains an example of sacrificial love greater—much greater—than Dr. King’s. That is the example of Jesus Christ himself. For whom did Jesus die? For whom did he suffer? The Lord was crucified at the hands of his enemies. The very people who put him to death were the people he came to save. They mocked and abused him. Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know not what they are doing” (23:34). They whipped and beat him. Jesus never said a mumbling word but gave his body to be broken for them and for us. They took his tunic and his robe, stripped him naked. He willingly allowed it. He did not demand his rights, repayment, or even an apology. The Son of God gave his life for sinners so that even though we were enemies of God, we might be made sons of God through faith in him.

When we were his enemies, Christ loved us. By so loving us, the Lord enables us to love him and love our enemies. We love God because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). Never underestimate the redemptive power of love.

The application for “love your enemies and do good to them” is pretty simple: Love your enemies and do good to them. Bless them. Pray for them. Endure their mistreatment. Give to your enemies and expect nothing back. So make a mental or an actual list of people you think of as enemies. Then do these things.

My friend, perhaps you are not a Christian. Reading this book, can you honestly say you love your enemies? Or do you show love mainly to those who treat you well and share your interests or background? It is good that you love those people, but can you see that Jesus defines that as a sinner’s love? Such love will not make you right with God. It will not earn you forgiveness or cover over your sins. For forgiveness and atonement, you need a Savior. When we take Jesus’s moral teaching seriously, it leads us to understand our need of rescue. We see the rightness of what he taught, and we see the wrongness of our hearts. If we are honest, we know we need someone to save us from our sinful selves. Only Jesus does that.

Luke 6:37-45

Our culture insists we must not judge others. We are told that judging others is immoral. We are told that we cannot judge others because we do not know what is in another’s heart. That has a certain appeal to it, doesn’t it?

That’s not how Jesus thinks about judgment. The Lord lays down four principles for righteous judgment.

The first principle for righteous judgment is to be generous to others in our judgments. When it comes to our judgment and perception of others, what goes around, comes around. If we avoid judging and condemning, others will not generally judge and condemn us. If we forgive and give, others will generally forgive and give to us. In fact, our generosity toward others will generally produce an overflowing generosity toward us. That is the point of verse 38—which in context has nothing to do with how much you put in the offering on Sunday morning; it has to do with how we regard and treat other people. If we would be moral in our judgments, then we must be generous toward others. The first step in righteous judgment is acquiring the right posture of heart: generous, charitable judgment.

The second principle for sound judgment is to be careful whom you follow. People become like their teachers. Whether in religious, business, or social settings, the people we look to as teachers will by their teaching and example press the pattern of their lives onto ours. Follow Jesus, and you become more like Jesus. If your leader is blind, then you will follow him into whatever pit or hole he walks into. If your leader sees with moral clarity, then you will follow him into righteousness and truth.

If we follow people who are hypercritical and condemning, sooner or later their manner becomes a part of our language and manner. If we follow someone who always builds others up, who shows kindness and humility, then we will likewise learn to be compassionate, patient, and tender.

The third principle of sound judgment is to deal with your own stuff. We cannot deal with our neighbor’s “splinter” while we have a “beam” in our own eye. That is hypocrisy. In verse 42 the Lord says, “First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the splinter in your brother’s eye.” He does not say take the beam out of your eye and then do not worry about your brother. Morality requires we help each other with our failings. It is immoral to see a brother or sister in sin and not help (Gal 6:1-2). Yet it is hypocritical not to attend to our sins first. We cannot see to help others until we have helped ourselves.

If you have ever taken a flight on an airplane, you have heard an illustration of this point. Before takeoff, the attendant reviews the safety instructions, including instructions for putting on oxygen masks in case of an emergency. The attendant tells the passengers they must put on their own mask before helping those around them. So it is with our sin and the sins of others.

After we have followed those three principles, then we are enabled by God’s grace and Spirit to judge a person’s heart morally and correctly. Again, our world tells us, “You cannot know someone’s heart.” The culture proclaims that “judging someone’s heart” is about the most immoral thing we can attempt. Everyone says the heart is a secret place, closed off to the world, and no one must tell you what lies in your heart.

Consider what the Great Moral Teacher says. All of us are like fruit trees. We produce either good fruit or bad fruit. The fruit we produce actually comes from our hearts. The invisible things of the heart are revealed by the visible actions and audible words of a person. We do not see into another person’s heart, but that does not mean the heart never reveals itself. The words and actions tell us what lies beyond natural sight in the heart.

In the end this means we cannot participate with people in our culture who love separating their actions from their hearts. Some people love justifying their wrong actions by appealing to “a good heart.” Jesus, the Great Moral Teacher, rejects that tendency. If the habit of a person’s life is sin, then that person is a sinner. If the habit of a person’s life is righteousness, then that person is righteous. The fruit reveals the root.

We will not discern or judge the hearts of others with any kind of clarity or accuracy unless we are first generous in our posture toward them, are following sound teaching ourselves, and are eager to deal with our own stuff first. Until those things are true of us, we should not worry too much about others. Instead, we should fall to our knees before God asking for this kind of integrity and humility. A generous posture keeps us from being mean and stingy in our judgments. Following sound teaching helps us to know what is and is not moral. Dealing with our own sin creates compassion and integrity.

That kind of person dispenses righteous judgment. We should ask God in prayer for this kind of people to serve as judges and lawyers in our court systems, officers on our police forces, and anyone with responsibility for deciding the outcome of people’s lives. Such people are gifts to us—whether they are government officials or personal friends. They embody the moral vision of the kingdom of God. They promote that vision by speaking the truth to us in love. We want and need people like this in our lives. Moreover, we want to be these kinds of people through Christ.

So consider your friends. Are they the kind of people who can evaluate your heart because they are generous toward others, are careful about whom they follow, and first deal with their own sins? What about you and me? Can we accept their judgments when they give them to us? Or are we too proud? Are we the kind of people described in verses 37-45?

Luke 6:46-49

The Lord ends his sermon with a final challenge in verse 46: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do the things I say?” The Lord Jesus speaks this to his new apostles and his disciples. He also speaks this to us.

If we are disciples or students or followers of Jesus, then we must obey him. It is hypocritical to call ourselves Christians and not do what Christ says. Worse than that: our disobedience proves we do not, in fact, love him. So Jesus says,

“If you love me, you will keep my commands.” (John 14:15)

“The one who has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.” (John 14:21)

“The one who doesn’t love me will not keep my words.” (John 14:24)

“If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” (John 15:10)

“You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:14)

Obedience to Jesus’s teaching is an essential requirement of Christian discipleship. Our obedience does not earn God’s forgiveness or acceptance. No one will obey their way to heaven. God saves sinners by grace alone through faith alone. But saving faith is never alone; it is accompanied by an obedience that comes from faith (Rom 1:5). Forgiveness and acceptance come only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But if our faith is true, then our obedience must be real. He is our Lord, so he commands our lives. In our obedience we demonstrate our love for him, we prove ourselves to be friends with him, and his love and the Father’s love rest on us.

To call him “Lord” and not do what he says is to make the word Lord meaningless. Years ago I heard a preacher illustrate this point by asking people to write two words on a note card. The two words were No and Lord. The preacher told us those two words could not stand side by side. We would have to cross one of the words out. He said, “If there is any area of your life where you say ‘No’ to Jesus, then you must cross out the word Lord. But if you call him ‘Lord’ of your life, then you must forever cross out the word No.” The only way to serve Jesus as Lord acceptably is to submit to his word in every area of life.

Obedience becomes a foundation for times of trial and storm. In the parable of verses 47-49, the obedient man lays a foundation on the rock, and though his house is battered by the rains, it stands to the end. The disobedient man builds his house on the sand. The storms of life destroy that house because he failed to build on the word of God. He did not obey the word of God, and so “the destruction of that house was great” (v. 49).

Ultimately, Jesus describes the difference between heaven and hell. Heaven belongs to those who believe the gospel and obey Jesus. Hell is the ruin that awaits those who reject the gospel and do not obey the Lord’s words.

Is that moral? Our culture says you cannot force your morality on another. The world says it is bigoted and intolerant to require others to live by your standards.

But here is Jesus, the Great Moral Teacher, demanding that the entire world call him Lord and obey his commands. He forces his morality onto the world, threatens ruin to those who disobey, and promises safety to those who believe.

In the end there are only two ways to live. We either obey the Lord and stand strong in his word, or we disobey the Lord and fall in ruin on judgment day. Obedience and blessing on the one hand; disobedience and ruin on the other. It all rides on whether you believe in and obey the Great Moral Teacher. You have to decide if Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or your Lord. If he is telling the truth—and he is—then the only sane thing to do is accept him as Lord and follow his teachings all the days of your life.