It was while he was sitting on the hill that day, with his disciples gathered around, that Jesus opened his mouth and taught them. What he was saying seemed almost casual. Too casual. Yet those who heard and took it to heart would never be the same again. Not with the second mile lifestyle! But it was the freewheeling, uninhibited and unrestricted love which made the real difference. This put the finger on the Grade A, number one problem of the whole world. It created for us an opportunity to compromise and try to cover up by explaining away what He said, so that the guilt of the excuse actually became greater than our frightful tampering with his teaching.
"For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" That separates the men from the boys. It also separates the righteous from the wicked. Of course there is nothing wrong with loving those who love you. That isn't the point. It's loving only those who love you, when there are a lot more people in the world who need loving and need it desperately. Some of them are quite loveless. Some are real problems--sticky problems. Even tax collectors, social outcasts shunned by polite society, and given the brush-off by nice people, love those who love them. No one can file claim for a reward for acting like a tax collector.
"And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?" What about one who does not even want to salute his brethren? One who slips out of the side door or goes down the other side of the street, to keep from meeting and greeting certain ones? It is implied that disciples of Jesus should do more than others. They should be more friendly, more hospitable, more generous, and more kind. They should be less egotistical, less selfish. Merely coming up to the standard of the Gentiles is not enough. To greet only your brethren is still to fall short. It is to miss the mark! The love that Jesus commanded is as wide as the ocean, as boundless as eternity, and as high as the heavens. It is not peanut-sized, and is bigger than life.
In the face of such teaching all else becomes secondary. Differences in social standing, dress style, ethnic background, race, all fade into oblivion. The things which loom so great in our sight, which become such frightful barriers to fraternization are swept away by Him who taught us to love the evil and the good man, to become children of the Father which is in heaven. Every person on earth needs to be loved and appreciated. Everyone needs to be shown courtesy, be given a greeting, and be warmly received.
We live in an age of frustration, disappointment, and discouragement. In a land of plenty men are not satisfied; living in luxury and physical comfort they are not at ease. Our educational institutions are filled to overflowing, but so are our courts for juvenile criminals. In spite of the numerous organizations dedicated to mental hygiene and social welfare, there are more neurotics and insane than at any time in our history. A symptom of our times is found in the tremendous upsurge of publications dealing with how to attain peace of mind, and the variety of suggestions is so great, and often so contradictory, as to upset the minds of some who were relatively at peace. The manufacturers of sedatives, tranquillizing drugs and barbituates are having a field day. America has one big headache and hangover. She is paying the price for insecurity.
In this state of crisis what contributions are being made to the welfare of humanity by believers in the Messiah? When He came personally into the world it was in much the same state as now, except that wars had been ended by the sway of a universal empire. The very extremity of man was an opportunity for God. The sun of righteousness beamed brighter because of the darkness of slavery, corruption, degradation, immorality and suicide of the world. If ever Christianity should be able to exhibit itself to the greatest advantage, it is under such conditions as presently obtain. Instead, the nominal disciples of the Master, seem actually to be enlarging the problem rather than providing a solution. The moral defections of those reared under Christian influence, the nervous and mental breakdowns suffered, constitute an alarming barometer of unhealthful attitudes.
It is high time that we awake out of sleep! The expenditure of effort to promote factionism and hate will take its toll of wrecked minds and sick bodies as certainly as we now live. Hate and fear are toxic poisons. They will kill as certainly as arsenic or strychnine! Many of my own brethren are the most unhappy people on the earth today. They are gloomy, morose, and despondent. They are fearful and unbelieving! They are worried and scared! They are spiritually sick! Many who put on an outward show of gay spirits are troubled with worries, jealousy and envy. They cannot save the world, because they have nothing real to offer it. What would be the gain for men to leave the world where they have been fighting their enemies to come in the church and start fighting their brethren?
Why is it that Christianity does not arouse the vibrant passions, kindle and enflame the spirit, and surcharge men with the thrill and joy that the first believers experienced? It is because men persevere in right actions and service to others, merely through force of habit, or because of social consciousness, or to escape from the brooding thoughts engendered by an imperious conscience. It is the lack of a guiding principle which poisons the springs of happiness in action, and makes life dull and spiritless.
The guiding principle of Christianity is love! But it is not love for a particular race, nationality, faction, congregation, segment, or group. It is love for mankind not for a certain kind of man. To be children of God implies more than entering into a relationship with God; it entails the responsibility of growing Godlike in character. But "God is love!" The expression of that love was universal, "God so loved the world." God had wisdom and power, but we are not told that God is wisdom and power. His was a divine philanthropy. He loved men because they were men, made in his image. "But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us . . ." (Titus 3:4, 5).
It is an amazing thing that under the guise of religion we are being taught today to not love men! The human heart was made to love. But it cannot retain a vacuum. If love is educated out of it, hate will rush in to fill it. Love is the most powerful, vital and active force in the universe. It is world-shaking and revolutionary. Nothing can stand before the application of its full potential. But a universal love for mankind is designated sentimentality, it is ridiculed, scoffed at, belittled even by those who profess to be children of that God who is love.
We are urged to love our group, our race, our church our nationality, our sect. We are afraid to love all men. To do so will upset our "little world" of security. It will make us vulnerable. We will be turned out of our little nest we have woven about ourselves. The churches of our land are employed to foster prejudice and animosity "in the name of Christ." We are taught to have nothing to do with Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists or Negroes. All of these are caught up in the human predicament. Each one is treading a path toward the grave.
God loves everyone of these. He sent His Son to die for them. The Son came among those who hated him. He ate with publicans and sinners. He visited in the homes of Pharisees. He touched lepers and the unclean. He forgave the woman caught in the very act of adultery. But we are told not to visit people who differ with us. We are instructed to keep away from them. They are not "faithful." We are! So our physicians are ministering to "the well." We have no sick among us. We do not really love the spiritually sick. If you want our love and service, you will have to get well. You must not be a problem.
Have you ever heard our brethren try to explain Matthew 5:43-48? Then, have you ever watched them try to put it into practice?
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." Love! Bless! Do good! Only by this means can you be the children of God. Jesus came to reveal God as a "servant-God." When the apostles were arguing heatedly about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom, Jesus arose from supper and girded himself with a towel and washed their feet. He accepted the role of a servant.
The world of mankind is divided into friend or foe as respects relationship to each of us. Every person I meet falls in one or the other of these categories. There are some who love us and some who hate us. There are some who bless us and others who curse us. But both are men and if we love mankind as such, we will have no problem of loving the various categories within the human realm. God made us men, but we have made various things of ourselves. We should love men because God made them, and in spite of what they have made of themselves.
Celsus, who was a bitter critic of the early Christians, and the target of apologies written by Origen, said, "These Christians love each other even before they are acquainted." If I am a true child of my Father, I shall desire and yearn for every man to be my brother. Man was created in God's image, and in whatever respect he has lost that image I must help him repair or regain it. He did not shatter that image because he was a Jew, a Negro, or a Japanese. Sin antedated the advent of racial differences. In the attempt to help one regain the spiritual image of God, I am not to see him as a Jew, Japanese, or Negro, but as man. "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him."
One of Jimmy Dolittle's flyers after spending many months in a dirty prison camp, where he was brutalized, said: "They were ignorant and mean, but we thought there was some good in them. The only way to develop that goodness was by understanding and education--not by brutally mistreating them as they did us. You can smile if you want to, but it made sense to me in that prison camp, and it still does. So I am going to a missionary school for training, and then I am going to return to Japan and spend the rest of my life there, teaching the importance of love among men."
Henry W. Shaw said, "Love looks through a telescope, envy through a microscope." To restrict our love to those who agree with us on some points of religion, is to deny at once the very basic element of Christianity, the equal and infinite value of every human soul. To love all men is actually looked upon as a sign of weakness. The truth is that it takes a strong man to really love his enemies. Weak men hate, despise and feel envy. Cowards are jealous, embittered and distrustful. Love makes one vulnerable. It exposes his very being to exploitation. When Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," he was meek, but he was not weak.
Those who are afraid to love all, may actually love no one. It is observable that those who cannot love all men, end up by disliking most men. Those who would restrict their love to their own brethren, do not even love those brethren, and will backbite, undermine and seek to destroy them. It is amazing that through the years those who have not learned to love, and who censure a deep affection for others than those with whom they associate, will divide those associates, and soon will not love even a part of them.
Tertullian was the first important Christian writer in Latin. He was born in Carthage, the son of a Roman centurion. He studied law and actually practiced in Rome. It was while there that he became a convert to the faith. In his De Oratione he wrote. "Do we suppose that we can approach the god of peace without being ourselves men of peace? Can we ask for forgiveness of sin with our own hearts full of hatred? How can the Father who condemns anger, receive us if he sees us full of spleen against our brother? It is not only anger that the Christian man should abjure, but everything that may hinder his prayers. He should breathe a spirit in harmony with him into whose presence he comes. The God whose spirit is holiness and joy and liberty, cannot receive a soul defiled, angry, or enslaved. Opposites cannot meet, without sympathy, no relation is possible."
Our problem is not so much of having love dwell in us, as it is of our dwelling in love, as a state. God who made all men, cannot live in a heart that hates any man. "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." Dwelling in love means that it forms the world in which the Christian abides. He eats love, drinks it and breathes it. He has no life aside from love. No man can say he is like God whose love is partisan, national or racial. "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." Many bold blatant race-haters will be sniveling cowards in the day of judgment. There can be no boldness when they are stripped naked and are seen as they truly are.
Paul begins with man and his misery. He talks about him in his wretchedness. He speaks of him under condemnation. But John begins with God and His perfection. God is the Absolute Being. He is the Great I Am, whom no eye hath seen or can see. All perfection dwells in Him. He is at once life, light and love. He is the inexhaustible source of life the sole principle of everything that is. John gives us a concrete notion of His moral goodness when He says that God is love. Love is not only a manifestation of His being. It is His very essence.
Love is so assuredly the absolute truth, that he who loveth is of the truth. When the inspired record says, "Hereby we know that we are of the truth" it is because the preceding verse says, "Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth." When love is reduced to its essence it is truth, and that truth in the absolute is a person. It is God. How silly it is for feeble man whose mind can only comprehend so much to say there is no absolute truth. How foolish it is for him to try and walk as if that were so and he was left to guide himself without chart or compass.
Truth is all that God is. To be of the truth is to be born of God, to possess Him, to be what he is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. "We know that we have crossed the frontier from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." Every person on this earth who is born of God and knows God is my brother. If I allow sectarian walls to be built and separate me from him I am a murderer and there is no eternal life abiding in me. I must seek out, search out and recognize all who are the children of God and I must love them, or I will suffer the fate of those who do not confess Him. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God."
The lever which will move the world to Christ is love. Regardless of how pure your doctrine will be, it will repel, instead of compel, when set forth in bigotry, intolerance and animosity. Even though you may divest yourself of everything, sell all your possessions and distribute them to the poor, it will avail nothing without love. If you consign your body to the flames and allow persecutors to fasten you to the stake and reduce your mortal frame to ashes, and have not love, it will only be burning flesh unless it is done in love for Him "who loved us and gave Himself for us." No one can be forced to accept Jesus Christ. You cannot drive men nor compel them. You cannot argue nor debate them into the new relationship which is eternal life.
The real test of faith in the Christ is the reformation worked in your own life. "For we ourselves also were at one time foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another." We must learn to see ourselves thus. We must quit trying to make it appear that we were guiltless and admit our guilt. We must make it apparent to all that we have changed. We have heard the call of the shepherd. We have heard the voice of our Lord. Now we have become associates of the Father and the Son, purveyors of love unlimited.
Jeremy Taylor said, "Love is the greatest thing that God can give us, for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God, for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the bond of perfection; it is the old, the new, and the great commandment and all of the commandments for it is the fulfilling of the whole law. It does the work of all the other graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue."