The Sense of Scripture: Studies in Interpretation . . .

TAKING JESUS SERIOUSLY

Therefore you shall he perfect, just as your father in heaven is perfect. -Mt. 5:48 

It may be an unorthodox rule of interpretation, or no rule at all, but I am persuaded that the Scriptures will really come alive for us and be much more meaningful to us when we have a serious encounter with the Christ who is revealed therein. To state it as a rule it would be something like: Interpret Scripture in the context of taking Jesus seriously, who he was and what he taught. This is to say that Jesus is what the Bible is all about. Re is its Wonderful Person, whether in prospect (the Old Testament) or in reality (the New Testament).

To come to terms with the Christ of Scripture, to really take him seriously, may be far different from our habitual or traditional thinking about him, whether drawn from theology, the church, or culture. We may recount episodes in his life and recite his teachings without ever making a serious effort to integrate them into our lives. Re stands there in Scripture and in the church as an integral part of our religion, but it is probable that few Christians have taken him seriously enough to accept the invitation he offers in Rev. 3:20: by inviting him into their hearts, unconditionally.

To know about Jesus in one thing, to know him is something else. To know a lot about the Bible is one thing, to take in the spirit of the Bible is something else. The problem in the church at Corinth was that it was carnal, according to 1 Cor. 3:1. They were Christians, but carnal Christians, and so they did not understand the things of God. The apostle lays down a crucial condition for understanding the things of God: they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14). He avows that "the natural man" cannot understand spiritual things, for they are foolish to him. By "natural" (or unspiritual as some versions render it) the apostle probably refers to the disbeliever whose worldly wisdom and selfish concerns keep him from accepting or understanding the revelation of God. It is foolish to him because it runs counter to his willful thinking.

So the apostle names three classes of people that include all of mankind that have been exposed to God's revelation: the natural (disbelievers blinded by pride and arrogance); the carnal (believers blinded by fleshly desires or worldly thinking); the spiritual (believers who are Spirit-filled, seriously committed to Christ).

He is saying that only one of those classes really understands what God's revelation is about. So we have a crucial principle in biblical interpretation: the Scriptures (in their essence) are spiritually discerned; only "He who is spiritual' (1 Cor. 2:14-15) really understands the things of God.

Since the apostle would concede that there are degrees within these classifications, i.e., some are more "natural" than others, some are less "carnal" than others, etc., we can reduce our principle to this: to the degree that we are spiritual is the degree of our discernment. And so as we grow in the Spirit we grow in understanding.

The text chosen for this installment illustrates the truth of the apostle's hard saying. In Mt. 5:48 Jesus clearly mandates that we are to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, which readily runs counter to the way a natural, carnal mind thinks. If Jesus had said, "Do the best you can under the circumstances" or "Be as nearly perfect as you can be," he would have conformed to human wisdom. But he said for us to be perfect, as God is perfect. Impossible!, says the carnal mind. To the extent that we are spiritual in our thinking to that extent we will take the standard of perfection seriously. When we insist that no one can be perfect we deny ourselves of the blessing that God bestows upon those who take Jesus seriously in this regard. The context shows that Jesus is talking about loving one's neighbor, forgiving the wrongdoer, doing good to all, the just and the unjust alike, as God does. He is not talking about sinlessness. God loves, God forgives, God does good, perfectly. Jesus tells us to be like that. Forgive!, not halfheartedly, but perfectly like God does. Can we forgive like that? Yes, or Jesus would never have said what he said. Perfect love, forgiveness, goodness may not come in a day and maybe not in years, but it will come, if not in this world then in the next, if we take our Lord seriously and keep moving toward the perfection that he will give us the grace to cultivate.

The one who says in his heart, "I'm going to love and forgive like God does" will be much nearer to the teaching of Jesus than he who follows the world and says, "No one can be perfect." So, Mt. 5:48 is spiritually discerned! If we are truly committed to Christ and consumed with the desire to do the will of God, we will not flinch at our Lord's call for perfection. We will resolve to spend our life here and in eternity achieving it.

Another example is what Jesus said to those who were the closest to him, and so each of us can hear him saying the same thing to us: "Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of God" (Mt. 18:3). Childlikeness! Now let's be honest and admit that such teaching is not taken very seriously even in the church, not even by the very best of us. Baptism we can relate to, even giving and churchgoing, but childlikeness? What does the carnal mind know of the innocence, purity, trust, forgiveness, teachableness, transparency, humility of a little child? How often does being a Christian transform one into a little child? Jesus did not say to do the best you can, but to be a child again. Those who are "of the Spirit" will take such demanding teaching seriously. To most others, who think in terms of macho values, it is so much foolishness. "Nice guys come in last," the world (and the church?) says.

The poet Elizabeth Allen may have caught the essence of what Jesus sought to convey to his friends when she wrote those moving lines: 

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight.  

The question we have to face is whether we really want to follow our Lord's unqualified demands. Childlikeness can be ours by means of his grace, if we really want it and are willing to take Jesus seriously.

The apostle Peter probably felt proud of himself that he could think in terms of forgiving up to seven times. Most of us (of the flesh) would consider that more than ample and would commend Peter for his magnanimity. But not Jesus. He laid on the apostle a forgiveness that knows no limits, for "seventy times seven" is not simply 490 but infinity itself.

We are not only to love our enemies (including those who criticize us and seek to do us in?) but to pray for them and bless them. We are even to seek their good. This is difficult if not impossible teaching for those of us in the western world who value revenge and aggressiveness. It is not that we willfully reject the standards that Jesus lays down, but simply that we do not allow ourselves to take them seriously. It would help immensely if we would pray to be perfect, infinitely forgiving, extravagantly loving and prayerful for those we dislike. We tend to give it all a lick and a miss, a hands-in-pocket attitude. The crucial, life-changing teaching of Jesus is not all that important to us.

While Jesus assures us that "You cannot serve God and money," we are convinced that we can. If Jesus warns us of the difficulty of the rich entering into the kingdom of God, we remain rather certain that this is no problem.

Part of the problem of not taking Jesus seriously may be over-familiarity, and what is more familiar than the story of the Good Samaritan? And yet it is the most disquieting portion of Scripture if we really take it seriously. Its thrust lies in the way Jesus changes the question. While he is asked to identify our neighbor, he turns the question to "Who proved neighbor to him who fell among robbers?" It wasn't the poor guy in trouble who was neighbor, but the Good Samaritan, of a race despised by those listening to the story, who proved to be neighbor to the one in need.

That is the key word in Christian commitment, proved. "Which one proved that he loved God by serving the one in need?," is the question that established the point of the story. It is much easier to get involved in defining a neighbor than in being one. We prove ourselves to be a neighbor in only one way: helping others.

You can fancy a bevy of theologians gathered at a Holiday Inn for a symposium on "The Concept of Neighborliness." One talks about it in terms of post-exilic Judaism, another in relation to Babylonian and Canaanite antecedents, while a third analyses the subject in the light of the non-Christian religions, etc., etc. No sweat to that. No "take up your Cross and follow me" in it. But the cook who worked overtime preparing their meals that day, be he black or white, bore his tired body to a halfway house to work more hours on his own time feeding the hungry who came in off the streets.

Which one proved neighbor? And which one really understands (spiritually discerns) the story of the Good Samaritan?

There are some disturbing facts about our world that should help us discern what Jesus is teaching in this story, such as: 

       About one-half of the world's population (some two billion people) make less than $200 per person per year.

       Most of the people of the Third World live in such degrading conditions that it defies description.

       Upwards of 100 million people in the southern hemisphere of our world are at this moment in danger of starvation. Another 400 million are chronically malnourished. Fully one billion people do not get nearly enough to eat.

       Children, women, and the aged suffer the most among the world's poor.

If we take Jesus seriously, will not the story of the Good Samaritan motivate us to consume less, live more frugally, and share more abundantly with the world's poor? There are many ways in which we can do this, one being through trustworthy world organizations that are involved in such work, such as Food for the Hungry and World Vision. If churches want to become true neighbors to a suffering world, they can start by spending less on themselves and more on those that have "fallen among thieves." The evil of all this is compounded by the fact that we in the "Christian" western world are often the "thieves" in that we prosper at the expense of the underdeveloped nations.

We are left with the question that will both open up the Scriptures to us as never before and transform our lives from selfish consumers to proven neighbors to a troubled world:  Will we take Jesus seriously?  —the Editor