THE INTENT AND THE DEED
Robert Meyers

The other day someone passed you on the street and spoke that brief but pleasant abbreviation you have heard a thousand times:

“Morning!”

How did you interpret? If you are woodenly literal-minded, you might have said to yourself, “Oh, really? Who doesn’t know that it’s morning?” The speaker’s actual word would have been no more than a declaration to you, if you had taken it at face value.

But of course you didn’t, because no one does. Everyone knows that when a man says “Morning!” he really means “Good morning to you,” or maybe something like “Great morning, isn’t it? I feel fine, I hope you do.” We sense what the intention is, and we respond to the intention, not to the bald literalness of the single word he spoke.

When someone asks, “How are you?” as he passes on the street, we never stop to say, “Well, my pulse is 78, my temperature is normal, my spleen is slightly below par, and my callouses hurt.” We know the intention is to say something rather like this: “You are a human being, so am I. We meet, and 1 greet you with an expression which really means only ‘hello’ and suggests that I wish to be friendly.” So we accept the intention we sense, and we say, “Fine,” which really means something like this: “I understand what you are saying to me by your brief question, I appreciate it, I am responding with a word of good will, although I don’t expect you to take it literally since something is nearly always wrong with the human machinery and I’m really not ‘fine’ in all ways.”

Life would get intolerably complex if we had to go through all that, consciously. We have shorthand expressions which mean quite other than their literal sense. We understand men in such cases in terms of their intentions, not what they literally say.

It is true in other cultures in the same way. When a Frenchman asks, “Comment allez-vous?” he is not really expecting you to answer, “I go by oxcart,” or “I go on my two feet, as you can plainly see.” His “How are you going?” is a collection of words which express this intention: “I greet you courteously as another human being; I hope you are doing well.”

Whether we wish to study the linguistic principle or not, we all understand this quite well in practice. Children often intend to show us love, but wind up ruining our house or breaking a treasured object of art. We accept the intention for the deed.

We understand that when a man hates so passionately that only time, place and opportunity keep him from killing, he is a murderer in the world of the spirit already. He is judged by his intention. He may never perform the deed, because of limiting circumstances, but his God has already been pained by his murder.

We all explain that when Jesus said a man who lusts after a woman has committed adultery with her already, he is judging intentions and not deeds. Purely selfish lust is an ugly thing, never a beautiful thing; when a man’s heart is so full of it that only time, place and opportunity prevent him from external gratification, he is guilty already in the eyes of God.

Nothing of this is new; we have heard such things all our lives, and we act accordingly. The only thing we seem unable to do is turn it around and make it apply to religious obedience in the way Paul does. We shall consider an example a little later, but first we need a clear statement of what we mean. Here it is:

If a man is guilty because he meant to do a bad thing and was hindered by circumstances, why is not a man justified who meant to do a good thing and was kept from it by circumstances?

If a man wants with all his heart to follow God’s will and obey God’s requirements for him, but is prevented by circumstance from doing this completely, will not God accept the intention for the deed? Would it be fair of God to accept the intention of a murderously angry man for the deed, but refuse to accept the intention of an eager and searching disciple for the deed, provided in each case there was a similar situation: circumstances kept each man from fulfilling his desire?

People are forever asking about the unbaptized masses around the world. They seem horrified to think God might accept some of them without their having been baptized, despite the fact that they may never have heard about baptism, or heard correctly. But on the basis of what we have just considered, there is no problem. Where a man intends to do God’s will as perfectly as he can know to do it, but is hindered beyond his control in the knowledge of that will, God accepts the intention for the deed. Such a man is baptized already, in terms of ultimate judgment, although he may be deprived here of some good things which fuller knowledge could bring him.

If this sounds strange, study the principle Paul develops in Romans 2:25ff. Read, for greater clarity, in a modern speech version, and substitute (as Alexander Campbell once did) the word “baptism” for the word “circumcision.” If you care enough to deduce a general principle from a solution to a local problem, you can learn a profound thing about how to deal with men who have not yet come to your measure of knowledge.

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