A Great Moral Teacher?

Luke 6:12-49

Main Idea: Jesus is the good moral teacher, yet that means more than we can imagine or think!

1. Wealth without Jesus Is Doomed, While Poverty with Jesus Is Blessed (6:20-26).
   1. Poverty with Jesus is blessed (6:20-23).
   2. Wealth without Jesus is doomed (6:24-26).
   3. The way Jesus thinks about value
2. Loving Our Enemies Is Rewarded, While Loving Only Our Friends Is Worthless (6:27-36).
   1. Whom we are to love
   2. How far we are to love our enemies
   3. Why love this way?
3. You Can Judge a Person’s Heart, If You First Judge Your Own (6:37-45).
   1. Be generous to others (6:37-38).
   2. Be careful whom you follow (6:39-40).
   3. Deal with your own stuff (6:41-42).
   4. Judge a person’s heart (6:43-45).
4. There’s Only One Correct Way to Serve God and Live Safely; All Other Ways Lead to Ruin (6:46-49).

Jesus was a great moral teacher.” Many people believe that about Jesus, even if they do not believe he was God or the Son of God. Have you ever noticed that people who claim Jesus was a great moral teacher almost never go on to talk about his moral teaching? The phrase has a way of simultaneously communicating appreciation for Jesus while lowering the Christian estimation of Jesus. In fact, many will say, “Jesus was a great moral teacher” as a way of denying that he is the Son of God.

Christians traditionally respond to this claim by reasserting Jesus’s deity. The famous Oxford professor C. S. Lewis argued that Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord, but he cannot simply be a good moral teacher. Lewis took this position because of what Jesus teaches. Any man who claims to be the Savior of the world but knows he is not is, in fact, not a good teacher but a liar. Further, he tells a demonic lie that deceives people and leads them to hell. If any man says he is the Savior of the world and really believes it, yet is not the Savior, that man may be sincere but he is crazy. He is a lunatic, to use Lewis’s choice of terms. But if Jesus was telling the truth about himself and how we are saved, then he is Lord. C. S. Lewis argued that these are the only three options.

If Jesus was telling the truth, then his good moral teaching cannot simply be acknowledged like a “hat tip” on social media. His teaching actually has to be studied, accepted, and applied. Think about it: What good moral teacher should have their good moral teaching ignored? Shouldn’t good moral teaching be embraced and followed by everyone—especially all those who think of themselves as good moral people?

Today’s good moral people tend to believe four things.

1. Poverty is a sin to be avoided, and riches are the goal of life.
2. Love is the greatest virtue, and it justifies all our desires.
3. You cannot judge someone else—ever. Period.
4. There are many ways to serve God, and all of them are equally valid.

That is an interesting list of moral claims because nearly everyone takes these things to be basically true. Nearly everyone who tells you that Jesus was only “a good moral teacher” has failed to actually consider their moral claims in light of Jesus’s good moral teaching. There’s a reason for that.

When we consider the good moral teaching of Jesus, we find ourselves face-to-face with a way of being good unlike anything in this world. We find ourselves face-to-face with goodness itself. When we come face to face with morality as God defines it, we actually come face-to-face with our need for someone to rescue us from the demands of goodness. The British writer G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it’s been found difficult and left untried” (What’s Wrong, 25–26).

Luke 6:12-49 features four teachings from Jesus that challenge our notions of goodness. In fact, these four teachings defy the commonly accepted virtues of our culture.

Wealth without Jesus Is Doomed, While Poverty with Jesus Is Blessed

Luke 6:20-26

Luke 6:12-19 sets the scene. In verses 12-16 the Lord holds an all-night prayer vigil. He prays in order to identify who among his disciples should be his apostles. An apostle is someone sent with a message. The twelve men listed in verses 14-16 would be the chief messengers of our Lord, and eleven of them would be the leaders of the early church. We will learn more about them as we study Luke’s Gospel.

Verse 17 tells us that Jesus came down with his apostles to a meeting of “a large crowd of his disciples and a great number of people” from all over the region. They “came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases” (v. 18). Jesus did indeed heal people with unclean spirits, and “power was coming out from him and healing them all” (v. 19). What Luke wants the reader to understand is not the miracle of healing—he only gives us one sentence on that—but Jesus’s teaching, which covers the rest of the chapter. Luke draws our attention to how Jesus’s mind works regarding morality.

Poverty with Jesus is Blessed (6:20-23)

In verse 20 Jesus speaks to his disciples. “Disciple” means student or follower. The Lord wants them to understand what life is like for those who follow him.

The word blessed, repeated four times in verses 20, 21, and 22, could be translated “happy.” The Lord describes the happy or joyful life from a kingdom perspective. Notice whom he describes as happy: the poor (v. 20), those who are hungry now (v. 21), those who weep now (v. 21), and those who are hated, excluded, insulted, and slandered (v. 22). The poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the hated. When we follow Jesus and find ourselves in those conditions because we follow him, then we are “blessed” or “happy” from God’s perspective.

Why? verse 20 concludes, “the kingdom of God is yours.” We may be poor and with no earthly kingdom, but the heavenly kingdom filled with glory belongs to those who follow Jesus. The kingdoms of this earth pass away but the kingdom of God remains forever.

Not only that, but our hunger now will be traded for complete satisfaction. Our weeping now will be traded for laughter. When Matthew records his version of these beatitudes he emphasizes them in a spiritual way. Matthew writes of the “poor in spirit” (5:3) and those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (v. 6; emphasis added). But Luke leaves us with a more literal meaning. Luke gives us a sense of the temporariness of hunger and weeping. They happen “now.” Such temporal poverty, hunger, and thirst will barely be a memory in the kingdom of God. All of our longing, hunger, and poverty will be satiated with laughter and joy in the presence of God.

And when people hate, exclude, insult, and slander the disciple “because of the Son of Man” (v. 22), then our rejoicing reaches its highest level. When we suffer for our Savior’s name we receive a prophet’s treatment and a great reward (v. 23). Jesus does not use adjectives superfluously. How does the Lord of heaven define “great”? How much reward will eternity provide in exchange for earth’s sorrow? It is not what the world teaches us to expect, but these are the truly happy disciples.

Wealth without Jesus Is Doomed (6:24-26)

Notice now the contrast. The Lord pronounces four “woes.” In the Bible when a prophet warns people of condemnation he would often begin with the word “woe.” Woe refers to unrelenting sorrow, pain, and agony, the kind that cannot be relieved. Woe crushes a person. And when prophets pronounce a “woe” against people, the woe comes at the hand of God’s condemnation.

“Woe” comes to the rich (v. 24), the full now (v. 25), those laughing now (v. 25), and those who are popular in the world (v. 26). These persons appear to enjoy all that the world has to offer, but there is no mention of the Lord in their life. In verse 22 Jesus says some disciples suffer in this world “because of the Son of Man.” The rich, full, laughing, and popular do not suffer in this world, and there is no mention of the Son of Man. They live it up without Jesus. They receive a warm welcome from all those who enjoy false prophets (v. 26).

But they are doomed. The rich “have received” (v. 24) (past tense) their comfort. Their comfort was their money. When their lives end and their money is gone, there will be no comfort for them. They will outlive their money, and their money will outlive its usefulness. All that will be left apart from Jesus is woe.

The now full live high off the hog. They satisfy their desires now. They have refrigerators full and money to eat out. Now. But when judgment comes, they will be hungry. Hell for them will be a constant hungering, never being satisfied, a gnawing in their guts. Their worm will never die. They had it all in this life, and they will have nothing in the life to come because they did not have Christ.

Those who are now laughing will not laugh last. They “will mourn and weep” (v. 25). In fact, many places in the Bible describe judgment and hell as “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” In the end they will be sorry they spent their lives laughing—laughing in worldly pleasures apart from Jesus.

The popular—those who knew what it meant to have “all people speak well of you”—will suffer woe too. Many people in Israel’s history loved false teachers. They showered the false teachers with praise and rewards, but in the end the people and the false prophet perished in God’s judgment. The people loved inviting preachers and teachers who would tell them all that their itching ears wanted to hear. The true prophets they rejected, but the false prophets they loved. Beware platforms and popularity. Popularity is sometimes evidence of God’s condemnation and a disciple’s unfaithfulness rather than God’s approval or favor.

A wealthy, well-liked person without Jesus is the most doomed person you will meet for as long as they are without Jesus. Everything about their life may look wonderful, but the Great Moral Teacher says, “They have no reward. Their future is full of woe.”

The blessed or happy life is exactly the opposite of what most people think. There is greater, longer-lasting happiness with Jesus plus nothing than with everything minus Jesus. The happiness of “everything minus Jesus” is temporary. The joy of “Jesus plus nothing” is eternal.

The Great Moral Teacher curses what the world thinks is good and blesses what the world thinks is bad. Who do you think has it correct: the world or Jesus?

The Way Jesus Thinks about Value

Jesus seems to envision a trade-off. On the one hand, you can choose him and the hardships of life that sometimes come with him and receive ultimate reward in glory. Or you can choose life without him and the pursuit of an earthly life of pleasure, only ultimately to suffer woe. The Lord teaches us in spiritual terms about delayed gratification and instant gratification. Instant gratification very often ends in condemnation. As you give yourself to carnal desire, though you think you’re having fun, you actually run straight for the guillotine of God’s judgment. But when we avoid carnal desire by denying ourselves and carrying our cross, we then run toward genuine bliss in God’s sight.

This is how Jesus thinks about value. He does not value what people value. He values himself above all things and blesses those who do the same. The Lord teaches this repeatedly. For example, the Lord asks questions like, “For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself?” (9:25). Your one soul possesses infinitely more value than everything in the world combined. The value of the soul is kept when the soul is given to Christ.

Or the Lord says things like, “Watch out and be on guard against all greed, because one’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions” (12:15). Abundant possessions do not determine the quality of our lives. Abundant life comes not from things but from Christ.

Or consider this challenging word from the Lord: “For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (18:25). The way the world values money and things is ultimately soul destroying. Jesus repeatedly teaches us the danger of riches. Luke 6 presents an exchange: Follow Jesus and suffer now, only to be greatly rewarded later. Or do not follow Jesus and seek pleasure now, only to suffer the “woe” of God’s condemnation forever.

Loving Our Enemies Is Rewarded, While Loving Only Our Friends Is Worthless

Luke 6:27-36

Our world loves to talk about love. Love is a cheap word nowadays. Because love is so little understood, it is almost impossible to find. But “love” remains the justification for just about anything people wish to do. So people tell us that any two people who “love each other” should be able to marry—even if the two people are of the same sex. Their professed “love” for each other provides moral justification for their acts. “Love,” we are told, “conquers all,” and “love wins.”

But here comes the Great Moral Teacher. And if Jesus taught anything, he taught us the truth about love. He showed us in his teaching and in his death on the cross the nature and scope of divine love. And the Lord calls his disciples to live out that love in two surprising ways.

Whom We Are to Love

The first surprise concerns whom we are to love. Verse 27: “But I say to you who listen: Love your enemies.”

Hatred for your enemies feels like the most natural thing in the world. It almost seems as if enemies were made for our hatred. They harm us, and we at least harden our hearts toward them. At most, we do them worse than they do us. We tell ourselves and others, “Retaliation is only right.” An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, we say. Is that not the way the world works? Is that not a morally acceptable way of thinking in our day? But heaven’s morality differs radically. Our Lord says, “Love your enemies.”

Then he goes a step further. The Lord points out in verses 32-34 that our love for people like us is in one sense worthless in God’s sight. Love for people like us does nothing to distinguish us from people who do not know God. There exists a kind of love completely natural to a fallen world. “Even sinners” (v. 32) love their friends and families, and they lend money to people they like. If we love those who love us, do good to those who do good to us, lend to those who can repay, then we really act out of self-interest rather than love. Jesus says, “Even sinners do that.” In other words, people who do not know God and do not live for God demonstrate this kind of love all the time. There is nothing supernatural about it.

If we find that our love is limited to people like us—say, our skin color, our education level, our political party—and if we find ourselves doing good only for those who have done us some favor, then that may only be self-love spread over a slightly wider area. However, the love of God is not self-interested but selfless. It is sacrificial. Genuinely supernatural, God-like love includes our enemies who wrong and abuse us. This is how Christian love surpasses the sinner’s love. Christian love extends to enemies.

How Far We Are to Love Our Enemies

That brings us to the second surprising thing Jesus teaches about love. Notice how far love goes.

“But I say to you who listen: Love your enemie, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also. And if anyone takes away your coat, don’t hold back your shirt either. Give to everyone who asks you, and from someone who takes your things, don’t ask for them back.” (Luke 6:27-30; emphasis added)

Love makes demands. Love cannot be shown with words only. We must love in word and in deed. Divine love returns good for evil. People hate us; we do them good. People curse us; we bless them. People abuse us; we pray for them.

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?

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.

You Can Judge a Person’s Heart, If You First Judge Your Own

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.

Be Generous to Others (6:37-38)

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.

Be Careful Whom You Follow (6:39-40)

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.

Deal with Your Own Stuff (6:41-42)

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.

Judge a Person’s Heart (6:43-45)

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?

There’s Only One Correct Way to Serve God and Live Safely; All Other Ways Lead to Ruin

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.

Conclusion

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.

Reflect and Discuss

1. Think for a moment about our culture. What would you say are three or four cherished moral ideas in the culture? How do those ideas compare with the morality of Jesus?
2. Would you rather have wealth without Jesus or poverty with Jesus? Why?
3. The Lord Jesus calls his followers to love their enemies. How easy or difficult do you think it is to obey that command?
4. Can you think of a time when you were in conflict with someone and were enabled to love them, and it transformed your relationship?
5. What does Jesus think is more valuable: your soul or all the wealth of the world? Think about that for a moment. What are some ways you can practically show that your soul is worth more than everything in the world?
6. Is it a sin to judge the actions and motives of others? Why or why not?
7. In what ways does sinful judgment differ from righteous judgment?