An Appointment with Christ: a Life of Grace (Luke 6:27), Part 4

My beloved brothers and sisters, may the Lord bless you. For those who have recently joined our program, we are discussing the attitude of grace. This is the passage we find in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, chapter 6, beginning with verse 27 and continuing onward. This passage is characterized by the first words that come from the mouth of our Lord.

It says: “... love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.” Later on, in other words that we have not read up to this point, the Lord Jesus Christ says: “... for if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive as much in return. Therefore, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Therefore, be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

You see in these following verses that we have just read that the Lord Jesus develops in greater detail what He has just expressed in this concise form when He says: “... love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who slander you.”

The Lord is contrasting the natural way of living with the divine way of living. We said in our last meditation that one of the reasons why it is so difficult for people—and even for Christians—to enter into this kind of life, into this style of conduct, is that it actually contradicts the natural way in which human beings behave.

Biological, carnal, animal, natural man behaves in such a way that he is always seeking personal gain, always acting according to the principle of survival and the gratification of self, and seeking those things that are advantageous to us. But God asks us to inconvenience ourselves and to choose to live on a much higher plane, the plane on which God lives, where God inconveniences Himself even for those who do not deserve such conduct.

That is why the Bible says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” God gave His Son Jesus Christ and, in a sense, inconvenienced Himself. The Bible says that Jesus Christ left His riches; that though He was rich, He became poor; though He was God, He became man; though He was immortal, He became mortal, dying on a cross. Though He was perfectly pure, He became a sinner in the sense that He took upon Himself humanity’s sins for us, so that we might be saved.

That is the essence of God’s grace. That is the way God acts, and God calls us to rise to that level, contrasting that kind of divine conduct with the conduct of ordinary people.

He says: If you love those who love you, what great credit is there in that? For sinners do the same. Ordinary people love those who love them. You treat well those who treat you well; you show consideration to those who do good to you and are considerate toward you; when someone gives you a gift on your birthday, you give them one the following year on their birthday; when someone invites you to their home for a meal, you invite them to your home. That is the kind of relationship human beings have. You want to be friends with the person whom you believe may offer you some advantage. Some people choose churches based on what kind of people attend them—whether there are businesspeople there, whether there are prosperous people—because in that way they can form relationships that will benefit them in their businesses and in other affairs of life. Even there, we can corrupt God’s ethic by seeking an advantage.

We seek out people who resemble us, who are like us. We try to spend our social time with those who can make us feel comfortable. We rarely seek to bless those who, in some way, offer us no advantage.

Whom do we invite during Christmas and the festive occasions throughout the year? Is it not those who are entertaining, who tell jokes, who are the life of the party, who play an instrument, or who are good conversationalists? We never invite the lonely person, the person who has difficulty speaking, the shy person, the single person, the person who does not necessarily have a sophisticated sense of humor. Instead, we seek out those who can enhance our gathering, our party, and help everyone have a good time so that the success of the party reflects well on us and people say, “Wow, what wonderful hosts!” We always seek out those who are already accomplished.

How many of us spend time seeking out those who have not yet come to express all their beauty as people, who have potential but have not found mentors to help them, develop them, and give them an opportunity to learn how to conduct themselves in certain social settings? Instead, we generally seek out those who are already fully formed, those who are already polished, those who can make us feel comfortable in some way.

But the Lord says, “What credit is there in that?” If you invite to your party someone whom you know will later invite you to another party, what credit is there in that? There is simply personal interest, self-interest; there is no generosity, no kindness, no love, and no element of nobility in that kind of conduct. Unfortunately, that is how people normally behave.

However, the Gospel calls us to a much, much higher, more sublime way of life, in which we act with an attitude of benevolence and mercy toward others. We do not think so much about what is best for us; instead, we are always considering how we can bless others. Our eye is a pastoral eye, an eye of mercy, through which we look at people with a positive disposition. I love the kind of person who tries to make us feel good when we meet them, rather than making us feel that we are under a critical gaze, that we must perform to satisfy them and show them what we are worth before they decide whether or not they will associate with us. I love the kind of person who immediately makes me feel comfortable, makes me feel good, and makes me feel that I am accepted—that I do not have to prove anything or show that I am more sophisticated, stronger, or more intelligent than I truly am. Such a person does not put me to the test, but immediately accepts me and treats me with a benevolent and merciful attitude.

How lovely that kind of human being is, and how much this world needs that kind of person. The Lord says, “... and if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.” That is, even the lowest people, even people who have no lofty sense of spiritual ethics, behave that way. What the Lord is calling us to do is not to live in the normal way. Not to live in the acceptable way. Not even to live in the respectable and ordinary way.

Many people, including many Christians, are content to live at the bare minimum, to live as everyone else lives. And although that is acceptable and, in some sense, lawful, it is not the standard to which Christ calls us. The Lord Jesus Christ was always saying, “... but I show you a better way.” The Lord also said, “The law of Moses says such and such, but I say to you such and such.”

That is why the Lord says: “... but to you who hear, I say: love your enemies,” because the world loves its friends; it does not love its enemies, and yet the Lord calls us to do so. Why? Because that is the way we must live if we are followers of Christ.

People live in a normal, ordinary way, but God wants you to live at a sublime level. Do not lend to those from whom you expect to receive, but lend to those who cannot repay you. In other words, that is scandalous. The truth is that sometimes we cannot understand this ethic of life, and it is not that we are supposed to be foolish; the Lord is using a kind of hyperbole here. What He is saying is: Do not always give with self-interest; do not always lend with self-interest. Sometimes you will have to lend to someone when you are not sure whether they will be able to repay you, but do it out of mercy. Do it to get them out of trouble; do it because you are like God, you are like Christ, who loves and gives to the one who cannot repay Him.

That is certainly what God has done for you, and therefore it is what you must do for others. May God bless you. May the grace of Jesus Christ be with you, and may God help us all to live at that level of life.