What is wrong with our Homes?
Now what at bottom is wrong with our homes? When we talk about homes, we mean the relationship which exists between a husband and wife, a parent and child, a brother and sister, or between any others who, through various circ.u.mstances are compelled to live together.
The first thing that is wrong with so many families is that they are not really open with one another. We live so largely behind drawn blinds. The others do not know us for what we really are, and we do not intend that they should. Even those living in the most intimate relationships with us do not know what goes on inside--our difficulties, battles, failures, nor what the Lord Jesus has to cleanse us from so frequently. This lack of transparency and openness is ever the result of sin. The first effect of the first sin was to make Adam and Eve hide from G.o.d behind the trees of the Garden. They who had been so transparent with G.o.d and with one another were then hiding from G.o.d, because of sin; and if they hid from G.o.d you can be quite sure that they soon began to hide from one another. There were reactions and thoughts in Adam"s heart that Eve was never allowed to know and there were like things hidden in Eve"s heart too. And so it has been ever since. Having something to hide from G.o.d, we hide it, too, from one another. Behind that wall of reserve, which acts like a mask, we cover our real selves. Sometimes we hide in the most extraordinary way behind an a.s.sumed jocular manner. We are afraid to be serious because we do not want others to get too close and see us as we really are, and so we keep up a game of bluff. We are not real with one another, and no one can have fellowship with an unreal person, and so oneness and close fellowship are impossible in the home. This is what the Scripture calls "walking in darkness"--for the darkness is anything which hides.
The Failure to Love.
The second thing that is wrong with our homes is our failure really to love one another. "Well," says somebody, "that could never be said of our home, for no one could love one another more than my husband and I love each other!" But wait a minute! It depends on what you mean by love. Love is not just a sentimental feeling, nor even strong pa.s.sion. The famous pa.s.sage in 1 Corinthians 13 tells us what real love is, and if we test ourselves by it, we may find that after all we are hardly loving one another at all, and our behaviour is all in the opposite direction--and the opposite of love is hate! Let us look at some of the things that that pa.s.sage tells us about love.
"Love is long suffering (patient) and is kind."
"Love vaunteth not itself (does not boast) is not puffed up (is not conceited)."
"Love does not behave itself unseemly (is not rude) seeketh not her own (is not selfish), is not easily provoked (does not get irritated), thinketh no evil (does not entertain unkind thoughts of another)."
How do we stand up to those tests in our homes? So often we act in the very opposite way.
We are often impatient with one another and even unkind in the way we answer back or react.
How much envy, too, there can be in a home. A husband and wife can envy the other their gifts, even their spiritual progress. Parents may be envious of their children, and how often is there not bitter envy between brothers and sisters.
Also "not behaving unseemly," that is, courtesy, what about that?
Courtesy is just love in little things, but it is in the little things that we trip up. We think we can "let up" at home.
How "puffed up," that is, conceited, we so often are! Conceit comes out in all sorts of ways. We think we know best, we want our way and we nag or boss the other one; and nagging or bossing leads on to the tendency to despise the other one. Our very att.i.tude of superiority sets us up above them. Then, when at the bottom of our hearts we despise someone, we blame them for everything--and yet we think we love.
Then what about "seeking not our own," that is, not being selfish?
Many times a day we put our wishes and interests before those of the other one.
How "easily provoked" we are! How quick to be irritated by something in the other. How often we allow the unkind thought, the resentful feeling over something the other has done or left undone! Yet we profess there are no failures in love in our homes. These things happen every day and we think nothing of them. They are all of them the opposite of love, and the opposite of love is hate. Impatience is hate, envy is hate, conceit and self-will are hate, and so are selfishness, irritability and resentment! And hate is SIN. "He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even until now." What tensions, barriers and discord it all causes, and fellowship with both G.o.d and the other is made impossible.
The Only Way Out.
Now the question is, do I want new life, revival, in my home? I have got to challenge my heart about this. Am I prepared to continue in this state or am I really hungry for new life, His life, in my home?
For not unless I am really hungry will I be willing to take the necessary steps. The first step I must take is to call sin, sin (my sin, not the other person"s) and go with it to the Cross, and trust the Lord Jesus there and then to cleanse me from it.
As we bow the neck at the Cross, His self-forgetful love for the others, His longsuffering and forbearance flow into our hearts. The precious Blood cleanses us from the unlove and ill will and the Holy Spirit fills us with the very nature of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 13 is nothing less than the nature of Jesus, and it is all gift to us, for His nature is ours, if He is ours. This blessed process can happen every single time the beginnings of sin and unlove creep in, for the cleansing fountain of Blood is available to us all the time.
All this will commit us very definitely to walking the Way of the Cross in our homes. Again and again we will see places where we must yield up our rights, as Jesus yielded up His for us. We shall have to see that the thing in us that reacts so sharply to another"s selfishness and pride, is simply our own selfishness and pride, which we are unwilling to sacrifice. We shall have to accept another"s ways and doings as G.o.d"s will for us and meekly bend the neck to all G.o.d"s providences. That does not mean that we must accept another"s selfishness as G.o.d"s will for them--far from it--but only as G.o.d"s will for us. As far as the other is concerned, G.o.d will probably want to use us, if we are broken, to help him see his need. Certainly, if we are a parent we shall often need to correct our child with firmness. But none of this is to be from selfish motives, but only out of love for the other and a longing for their good. Our own convenience and rights must all the time be yielded. Only so will the love of the Lord Jesus be able to fill us and express itself through us.
When we have been broken at Calvary, we must be willing to put things right with the others--sometimes even with the children. This is, so often, the test of our brokenness. Brokenness is the opposite of hardness. Hardness says, "It"s your fault!" Brokenness, however, says, "It"s my fault!" What a different atmosphere will begin to prevail in our homes when they hear us say that. Let us remember that at the Cross there is only room for one at a time. We cannot say, "I was wrong, but you were wrong too. You must come as well!" No, you must go alone, saying, "I"m wrong." G.o.d will work in the other more through your brokenness than through anything else you can do or say.
We may, however, have to wait--perhaps a long time. But that should only give us to feel more with G.o.d, for, as someone has said, "He too has had to wait a long time since His great attempt to put things right with man nineteen hundred years ago, although there was no wrong on His side." But G.o.d will surely answer our prayer and bring the other to Calvary too. There we shall be one; there the middle wall of part.i.tion between us will be broken down; there we shall be able to walk in the light, in true transparency, with Jesus and with one another, loving each other with a pure heart fervently. Sin is almost the only thing we have in common with everyone else, and so at the feet of Jesus where sin is cleansed is the only place where we can be one. Real oneness conjures up for us the picture of two or more sinners together at Calvary.
CHAPTER 7 THE MOTE AND THE BEAM
That friend of ours has got something in his eye! Though it is only something tiny--what Jesus called a mote--how painful it is and how helpless he is until it is removed! It is surely our part as a friend to do all we can to remove it, and how grateful he is to us when we have succeeded in doing so. We should be equally grateful to him, if he did the same service for us.
In the light of that, it seems clear that the real point of the well-known pa.s.sage in Matthew 7:3-5 about the beam and the mote is not the forbidding of our trying to remove the fault in the other person, but rather the reverse. It is the injunction that at all costs we should do this service for one another. True, its first emphasis seems to be a condemnation of censoriousness, but when the censoriousness in us is removed, the pa.s.sage ends by saying, "Then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother"s eye."
According to the New Testament, we are meant to care so much for the other man, that we are willing to do all we can to remove from his eye the mote which is marring his vision and hindering his blessing.
We are told to "admonish one another" and "exhort one another" and to "wash one another"s feet" and "to provoke one another to love and good works." The love of Jesus poured out in us will make us want to help our brother in this way.
What blessing may not come to many others through our willingness humbly to challenge one another, as led by G.o.d. A humble Swiss, named Nicholas of Basle, one of the Society of the "Friends of G.o.d,"
crossed the mountains to Stra.s.sbourg and entered the Church of Dr.
Tauler, the popular preacher of that city. Said Nicholas, "Dr.
Tauler, before you can do your greatest work for G.o.d, the world and this city, you must die--die to yourself, your gifts, your popularity, and even your own goodness, and when you have learned the full meaning of the Cross, you will have a new power with G.o.d and man." That humble challenge from an obscure Christian changed Dr.
Tauler"s life, and he did indeed learn to die, and became one of the great factors to prepare the way for Luther and the Reformation. In this pa.s.sage the Lord Jesus tells us how we may do this service for one another.
What is the Beam?
First, however, the Lord Jesus tells us that it is only too possible to try to take the tiny mote, a tiny speck of sawdust, out of the other"s eye when there is a beam, a great length of timber, in ours.
When that is the case, we haven"t a chance of casting out the mote in the other, because we cannot see straight ourselves, and in any case it is sheer hypocrisy to attempt to do so.
Now we all know what Jesus meant by the mote in the other person"s eye. It is some fault which we fancy we can discern in him; it may be an act he has done against us, or some att.i.tude he adopts towards us.
But what did the Lord Jesus mean by the beam in our eye? I suggest that the beam in our eye is simply our unloving reaction to the other man"s mote. Without doubt there is a wrong in the other person. But our reaction to that wrong is wrong too! The mote in him has provoked in us resentment, or coldness, or criticism, or bitterness, or evil speaking, or ill will--all of them variants of the basic ill, unlove.
And that, says the Lord Jesus, is far, far worse than the tiny wrong (sometimes quite unconscious) that provoked it. A mote means in the Greek a little splinter, whereas a beam means a rafter. And the Lord Jesus means by this comparison to tell us that our unloving reaction to the other"s wrong is what a great rafter is to a little splinter!
Every time we point one of our fingers at another and say, "It"s your fault," three of our fingers are pointing back at us. G.o.d have mercy on us for the many times when it has been so with us and when in our hypocrisy we have tried to deal with the person"s fault, when G.o.d saw there was this thing far worse in our own hearts.
But let us not think that a beam is of necessity some violent reaction on our part. The first beginning of a resentment is a beam, as is also the first flicker of an unkind thought, or the first suggestion of unloving criticism. Where that is so, it only distorts our vision and we shall never see our brother as he really is, beloved of G.o.d. If we speak to our brother with that in our hearts, it will only provoke him to adopt the same hard att.i.tude to us, for it is a law of human relationships that "with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Take it to Calvary.
No! "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye." That is the first thing we must do. We must recognise our unloving reaction to him as sin. On our knees we must go with it to Calvary and see Jesus there and get a glimpse of what that sin cost Him. At His Feet we must repent of it and be broken afresh and trust the Lord Jesus to cleanse it away in His precious Blood and fill us with His love for that one--and He will, and does, if we will claim His promise. Then we shall probably need to go to the other in the att.i.tude of the repentant one, tell him of the sin that has been in our heart and what the Blood has effected there and ask him to forgive us too. Very often bystanders will tell us, and sometimes our own hearts, that the sin we are confessing is not nearly so bad as the other"s wrong, which he is not yet confessing. But we have been to Calvary, indeed we are learning to live under the shadow of Calvary, and we have seen our sin there and we can no longer compare our sin with another"s.
But as we take these simple steps of repentance, then we see clearly to cast out the mote out of the other"s eye, for the beam in our eye has gone. In that moment G.o.d will pour light in on us as to the other"s need, that neither he nor we ever had before. We may see then that the mote we were so conscious of before, is virtually non-existent--it was but the projection of something that was in us.
On the other hand, we may have revealed to us hidden underlying things, of which he himself was hardly conscious. Then as G.o.d leads us, we must lovingly and humbly challenge him, so that he may see them too, and bring them to the Fountain for sin and find deliverance. He will be more likely than ever to let us do it--indeed if he is a humble man, he will be grateful to us, for he will know now that there is no selfish motive in our heart, but only love and concern for him.
When G.o.d is leading us to challenge another, let not fear hold us back. Let us not argue or press our point. Let us just say what G.o.d has told us to and leave it there. It is G.o.d"s work, not ours, to cause the other to see it. It takes time to be willing to bend "the proud stiff-necked I." When we in turn are challenged, let us not defend ourselves and explain ourselves. Let us take it in silence, thanking the other; and then go to G.o.d about it and ask Him. If he was right, let us be humble enough to go and tell him, and praise G.o.d together. There is no doubt that we need each other desperately.
There are blind spots in all our lives that we shall never see, unless we are prepared for another to be G.o.d"s channel to us.
CHAPTER 8 ARE YOU WILLING TO BE A SERVANT?
Nothing is clearer from the New Testament than that the Lord Jesus expects us to take the low position of servants. This is not just an extra obligation, which we may or may not a.s.sume as we please. It is the very heart of that new relationship which the disciple is to take up to G.o.d and to his fellows if he is to know fellowship with Christ and any degree of holiness in his life. When we understand the humbling and self-emptying that is involved in really being a servant, it becomes evident that only those who are prepared to live quite definitely under the shadow of Calvary, ever contemplating the humility and brokenness of the Lord Jesus for us, will be willing for that position.
As we approach this subject and its personal application in detail to our lives, there are three preliminary things which need to be said to prepare us to understand the low and humbling position which He wants us to take.
In the Old Testament two sorts of servants are mentioned. There are the hired servants, who have wages paid to them and have certain rights. Then there are the bond-servants, or slaves, who have no rights, who receive no wages and who have no appeal. The Hebrews were forbidden ever to make bond-servants of their own race. Only of the Gentiles were they permitted to take such slaves. When, however, we come to the New Testament, the word in the Greek for the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ is not "hired servant" but "bond-servant," by which is meant to be shown that our position is one where we have no rights and no appeal, where we are the absolute property of our Master, to be treated and disposed of just as He wishes.