Red Letters 18
"Leave Your Gift & Go"
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Ephesians 4:17-31 English Standard Version (ESV)
17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.
18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.
19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!
21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,
22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
27 and give no opportunity to the devil.
28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
Matthew 5:21-26 English Standard Version (ESV)
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’
22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you,
24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.
26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
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Last week we read how Jesus came to do two things: to fulfill the law and the prophets with His coming, and to effectively uphold the law and commandments as something we ought to honour and follow. Be reminded that Jesus was not saying that the law leads to righteousness or salvation. It is Jesus Himself that is our righteousness. It is Jesus Himself who is our salvation.
But Jesus is also saying that for the one who’s righteousness is found in Him, their life ought to reflect that faith through good works which is obedience to God and faithfulness to all of His words and commands found in both the Old and New Testament. We can read in Scriptures that God desires to make all things whole and to make all things new and good. And He begins this through Christ on the Cross in who’s death and resurrection we are, and are being, made whole, righteous and holy. And this is a new life found in Christ. It is a good, good life, full of God’s favour, mercy, love, compassion and blessings. It is a life of God’s guidance and grace. But this new life is one that requires our everything and our all!
God says six times in the book of Leviticus, (and a couple of times elsewhere) ‘Be holy for I am holy” And to be holy is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deut 6:5) Holiness is to be faithful to God and to love Him with all your heart, mind, soul, spirit, strength. That means in everything you feel, have it point to God. For everything that you think, let it point to God. With everything that you do, for the glory of God. That the entirety of our beings would LOVE God fully and wholly and completely. And this is a life that is on the path to righteousness. As with the Israelites, it is still in our obedience to the commands and ways of the Lord that we are not only moving and journeying towards Christ, but we are pointing to Him for all to see! It is in this way we are salt and light!
The late R.C. Sproul, the founder of Ligonier Ministries, a theologian and presbyterian church in America minister said “The Bible does not say that God is love, love, love or grace grace grace.
The Bible says He is holy holy holy.” And God’s holiness is his utter separateness from all things.
It is His divine difference from all other things. And in His holiness: He created us to be holy. And Jesus calls us to be holy. And the Holy Spirit sends us to be holy. And I believe a direct expression of this is in our love. The Scriptures does indeed say that God is love and so it makes sense that a part of holiness is love.
Jesus Himself says in John 13:35:
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
And while Jesus talks about loving your enemies a little later on in His sermon on the mount,
He starts with us from the furthest extreme of how people are to treat one another by quoting “Thou shalt not kill”. This is important because the people at the time all lived where the division between social class and people groups were far more visible and acute that today. The Jewish people were living as an exiled people under the oppressive ruling thumb of the Roman Empire. And those sitting at Jesus feet were the marginalized and oppressed. All they knew was hatred. All they knew was shame. All for things that were beyond their control. And then there were those in society who enforced and perpetuated these evils. They were the religious leaders, the Pharisees, the tax collectors, and those who basically sold themselves out to the Roman Empire. These were the people who looked down on the social outcasts.
Jesus was saying, to a people who knew nothing more acutely than discrimination, either by being complicit to it, or victimized by it, that there is in fact more to living and caring for others than the sixth commandment “You shall not kill”
When I was a youth pastor, one of the most common questions I got always involved “How far was too far?” Whether it was dating and the questions of “Are you allowed to hold hands, kiss?”
Or “Is it bad to date a non-Christian” and beyond. And I read in a book by Andy Stanley one of the most helpful observations to this line of thinking. He wrote it is not so much that people are concerned with whether they are breaking a commandment, or disobeying God, but what we really want to know is: “How close can I get to sin without sinning?”
Immediately in the face of the laws and commandments, and our own temptations, there is this negotiation that happens in us. We take what we read and begin to deconstruct how that functions in our life with the least amount of impact in how we live. Which… is obviously NOT the right way to go about it. Because that was what people were doing with the laws found in the Torah or the OT. Rather than being truly concerned with holiness, people just wanted to know how close they could get to sin without sinning. So they looked at “thou shalt not kill” and thought that they were doing ok. They thought that even though they may not be treating others with respect, dignity or even fairness, that as long as they were not murderers, they were okay.
And Jesus point blank says no.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. (Mt. 5:21-22)
In the eyes of God, it is not enough that we do not kill a people, which we consider the be the greatest evil we can inflict on another. But Jesus says that being angry with your brother or sister is enough to get you thrown into hell. To even call someone a fool (which is the most muted of colourful words that begin with F) makes you liable to judgement.
I want to pause there and ask that you take a moment to reflect on this. How often are you angry with someone? How often do you utter to a person or to someone how foolish or dumb they are. Many of us do it all the time. Being angry with a person and calling them a fool, in Jesus’ eyes, is just as severe a sin as murder. When you think about this, it does not make sense! How could that possibly be true? You look at this from a legal perspective, no person would ever be given life in prison because they called someone a fool, though they would be put away for life if they killed a person. But that is the thing about sin and ultimately holiness.
Without the appropriate perspective of what holiness is, sin is easily negotiable to us.
It becomes easily reasonable and easily justifiable by the standards of the world. We think to ourselves: “At least I didn’t kill the guy. I woulda! But I didn’t” and think that that is enough. But Jesus is painting for us a picture of what righteousness and holiness is. It is a higher standard than we have made it to be.
And then Jesus says…
So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Mt. 5: 23-24)
This is how important this is to God. He would want us to go be reconciled with others before we came to worship Him! He desires that we are not divided or being divided by our differences and hurts. He desires that we are not giving the devil the opportunity to do the one thing he wants most:
To separate people from people, and people from God. It is even to the point where Jesus is saying that you should not only not be angry with your brother or sister so as not to be liable for judgement, but that if someone is angry with you, then it is for you to go and be reconciled to them so that you do not leave them to be liable for judgement. But Jesus is saying, for those on either side of an argument, it is both of your responsibility to do something about it.
This is a the new life that Christ has given you. It is a life, as Paul writes, that we have learned from Christ. And it is not marked by record keeping, belly aching, self justification, negotiating, or by revenge. It is not marked by a hardness of heart, by callousness, by deceitful desires or by falsehood and anger. This is the life that Christ died to clothe us in. It is a life that is not marked by living in a world of individualism where my rights and wants outweigh those of others. And never by bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, slander and malice.
But to be clothed in Christ, who’s righteousness binds us to one another and gives us a new life that is marked by love, grace, and holiness. It is marked by compassion and forgiveness, by honesty and edification. It is marked by holiness.
Christ has made a way for us to be holy in Him. And He calls us into a life that is worthy of that calling. Where we exercise more than just enough to pat ourselves on our backs, but to look deeper into the purpose for which we have been called, created and sent. Jesus is calling us to live holy lives. Lives that point to Him in all things. Especially in our love to Him and our care for others. May the Spirit of the Lord lead you to repentance as you confess of your anger and lay it at His feet, so that you may pick up the gentle-kindness and mercy He showers you with and bear it to the world.
Amen.