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The four Gospels display the perfect life of the Lord Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew depicts Him as the King; the Gospel of Mark, as the Servant; the Gospel of Luke, as Man; and the Gospel of John, as God. One of our frequent failures in reading the Gospels is to pay brief attention to the words and deeds of Christ only. Indeed, His words and deeds are enough to capture our hearts. But to do only this is a failure. Seldom do we see Christ Himself, and seldom do we behold the Christ that we ought to behold. The reason we study these writings on Christ's words and deeds is that we would know the living Christ.
This being the case, let us spend some time to meditate on the subject. First, let us meditate on the inspired writings of God. Next, we have to meditate on the Christ who is revealed through these writings. We should sit back quietly, open up the Holy Book, and read a portion of the record of our Lord's excellent life on earth. We should meditate on His wisdom, grace, patience, love, beauty, gentleness, tenderness, meekness, and sympathy. We should meditate on Him until His life jumps out of the pages and our hearts burn in love for Him. He is precious, He is lovely, and He is refined. We should meditate on Him until His fine acts come alive before our eyes and deeply attract us, to the extent that we would desire Him alone and would feel at a loss with anything less than a full possession of Him and a full taste of His love. We should meditate on His acts, to the extent that our life bears the same kindness and grace. We see the Lord's wisdom in His answer concerning the source of His authority, and we see the wonder of His judgment in His answer concerning paying tribute to Caesar. All His acts are fully lovable. Those who meditate on Him will not be disappointed. May we know our Savior more and more.
Coarseness is something that has no place in godly living. Before believers allow God's grace to work in their lives, they have many hard and unrefined areas. To be negligent, to be inconsiderate of others, and to neglect caring for others are the common illnesses of the saints. However, these are things that even the most spiritual saints often neglect. If a person is only slightly careless, he will find himself unable to tend to everything properly. All those who are unable to control their mind properly have this problem. To be negligent is a characteristic of those who do not have full control of their mind. These people are mostly undisciplined in their mind. Their thoughts are complicated, and they themselves do not have the ability to concentrate and to integrate ideas. Since they are careless in their considerations, in many areas they become negligent and show impropriety in the way they treat others and handle matters.
Another major reason for negligence is to pay too much attention to oneself. Because a person cares too much for his own convenience, he neglects others' needs. While others are asleep, they make noises and disturb others unthinkingly. These noises may even be from praying or studying the Bible! When meetings are called, they keep others waiting for a long time while they tend to their own private affairs. In order to maintain their own name, they open their mouth to slander others. In order to preserve their own interests, they extort and cause damage to others. Because these ones do not have the spirit of the cross, without realizing it they neglect others and do not think of others. Sometimes such behavior can even come from a sincere heart! Yet they are bound to cause others embarrassment. Many times we think that negligence is just frankness, simplicity, and informality! Yet coarseness is never the fruit of the Holy Spirit. What the saints should seek after is that in everything they would be careful, considerate, sensitive not to cause others inconvenience, not to leave their own self-will unchecked, and not to embarrass others. The Lord's cross and the Holy Spirit have a grinding power which can cause the most coarse person in the world to become tender. However, in order to be careful in everything and to be sensitive and caring, there must be the real dying to the self. Only then will a person not care for his own interest and be willing to suffer and to seek for others' benefit in all things. We should exercise our will to control our mind, so that we will not become negligent unconsciously of others' needs. "So then death operates in us, but life in you" (2 Cor. 4:12). The Lord's committing of His mother to the care of others (John 19:26-27) is a real example to us!
Prayer is an expression of our desire before God. The Bible records that many people had their prayers answered. Every one of them prayed with a desire. Without a desire, there is no need for prayer. If what we pray for truly comes from the bottom of our heart, surely the answers to our prayers will not be so few. It is because our desire is not single that our prayers become sounding brass and clanging cymbals. The greatest danger to prayer is our attempt to be ornate and to pray according to formal rules. There is more danger in public prayer than in private prayer. Actually, nine times out of ten the long prayers of a "thousand words" are empty prayers. I am afraid such prayers are directed more toward men than toward God. Many times, the content of a prayer is very pleasant, the voice very desperate, and the tone very harmonious. Yet everything is directed toward man. God will not hear nor answer such a prayer. Prayers that are without any desire are a mockery to God. In God's eyes these prayers are detestable. Even when a person prays alone, is it not true that many terms he uses are familiar terms that are uttered without much thought? Because the words have become so familiar, the same words may be uttered without any response from the heart. Such prayers are really a waste of time. They are worse than useless!
Those who truly understand God and His holiness and majesty will never do such things. If we come to God with a pure heart and realize who He is with whom we have come face to face, would we ever dare to be hypocritical? Actually, we should never pray beyond what the Holy Spirit has prompted us to pray. If we do this, surely it is counterfeit. Hence, it is best to allow the Holy Spirit to place in our spirit the things that we should pray for, so that we will not offend God. We should learn to be honest before God. It is better to have short prayers than false prayers. We should pay all the more attention to this matter when we pray for others. Many supplications are but a kind of payment of debts! Thus, there is no sense of desire, and the whole thing is a mere routine. Therefore, those who do not have a real love for others cannot pray for others. When we feel others' need to be like our own, we will pray sincerely for them. When we feel others' need in the same way they feel it themselves, we will make supplications for them faithfully. It is because there is no love for others that prayers have become mere empty voices. We should sympathize with others more and should identify ourselves with others more. May we henceforth pray with our mouth and also with our heart. May our prayers reach the presence of God like fragrance.
Christians are the most unaffected people. Yet at the same time, they are the most compassionate people. They know only the heavenly things. Other than the Lord Jesus, they have no other loves. This is why they are the most unaffected people. However, they are not selective in their love of men; they love all the brothers, the lovable ones as well as the unlovable ones, and they love even their enemies. This is why they are the most compassionate people. Holiness is the believers' goal. Yet if a person is not careful, his holiness will become others' stumbling block. In our experience, many times our holiness becomes a hardness! The holy believers many times are the difficult ones! The holier they are, the more people in their eyes need to be condemned, and the more merciless will the judgments and criticisms be that follow. The holiness of those who do not fully understand God's grace gives the impression that they are without affection and are simple-minded. Such people will not help others but will only invite criticism. They think that they are uplifting God's standard and bearing a good testimony for God's truth.
However, they have forgotten that God's holiness belongs to God, while they are human. We have to recognize this fact and should not indiscriminately take God's holiness as our holiness. God in His holiness is imposing and unapproachable, but we are human. Although we are saved and regenerated, we are still human. We should assimilate God's holiness and make it our human holiness. This is what the Lord Jesus did in His life. He was holiness incarnate. On the one hand, in His spirit He was separated from sinners. When Peter saw Him, he had to declare, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord" (Luke 5:8). On the other hand, He is the friend of sinners, publicans, and prostitutes, the men and women despised by the human race. Christ sympathized with them, cared for them, had pity on them, and comforted them. In the first case, He demonstrated His holiness. In the last case, He also demonstrated His holiness. He was not at all unapproachable, nor was He hard in any way. It is good for believers to be holy, but they must not be hard and unapproachable to the extent that others cannot love or admire them. Actually, to be hard is not the same as to be holy. The two are absolutely different. It is right to be holy. Yet this is with respect to the self. Toward ourselves, we should not be afraid of being hard. To give up self-pitying is a signpost to the way of the cross. Yet toward others we should have love and sympathy. God is holy, but this holiness is coupled with grace. We can be holy, but we must not be negligent to the point that we become cold and indifferent like rocks and wood. God has not saved us to become non-human. On the contrary, it was because we had fallen into a non-human condition that He came to save us and make us human. Hence, although we may appear to be the most unaffected people, we should at the same time be the most compassionate people. A truly holy life is never lacking in meekness, peace, goodness, and all the other virtues. We should treat others in the same way that a shepherd cares patiently for his flock. A poured-out life is often a fruit-bearing life. Hardness drives men away, whereas kindness melts men's heart to join us in the heavenly path.
God's grace never changes toward us. However, our feeling toward God's grace changes with time. Actually, there is never a moment that God's grace ceases. However, the experience of our enjoyment of God's grace changes. The first condition for the enjoyment of grace is our need. The more need we sense, the more we treasure grace. Those who do not feel any need will not consider God's supply as grace. One failure of the saints is to think that a man needs God's grace only when he is a sinner. It is true that we are saved by God's grace. But we need God's grace all our lives, and there is not a moment when we do not need God's grace. Those who begin with God's grace have to be perfected through God's grace. It is true that God has forgiven our sins and has caused the judgment of our sins to fall on the Lord Jesus. Everyone who believes in Him is saved. Such grace is indeed the greatest. But our heart is most wicked. When we become more advanced in our Christian journey, the Lord may grant us more grace to have more victories, and spontaneously we credit these glories of victories to ourselves and consider ourselves as rather good! Although the Lord remains the same toward us, we do not feel Him and do not sense as much need for Him as before! Because of the deceitfulness of our heart, many times God allows us to fall into temptations or even to be sifted by the devil. When we fail, we condemn and blame ourselves and hate our own sins, thinking that we are sin incarnate and that it would not be too much for the Lord even to condemn us to perdition again. At such times, God shows us His grace. Although we are deep in sins, His grace is sufficient for us, and He is willing to forgive our sins. Although we have failed, He will not forsake us.
How our hearts then swell in gratitude! How we marvel at the Lord's amazing grace! Although we are hopeless sinners, He is still willing to bestow grace and mercy upon us, and He still cares for us. This makes us all the more thankful for God's amazing grace, and it causes us to realize that we need His grace moment by moment. If God had not been bestowing grace on us continually, we would have perished long ago in the same way the worldly ones have. Those who know their own sins know the preciousness of God's grace.
Grace always humbles a person. If a person is not a sinner, he does not need grace. To confess that one is a sinner is to be humble. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, it is easy at that moment for us to humble ourselves. But how difficult it is for us to judge ourselves day by day and to consider that no good thing is in our flesh! It is not an easy thing for a person to continuously consider himself incapable and unable to perform good. Our heart always wants to glorify itself, thinking that we can and will do good, forgetting God's grace and reckoning that we have no need of it. Only when we have humbled ourselves will we confess that our life in Adam is just corrupt and defiled. Only then will we pursue God's grace. We feel the sweetness of God's grace during the times of our failures. But we should in the same way feel His sweetness all the time. We feel the need to have God's grace when we sin. In the same way we should feel the need for such grace all the time. What a pity that we acknowledge the filth of the Adamic life only when this old Adamic life is activated, but we have a different evaluation of it and are not willing to humble ourselves at other times when the old Adamic life is hidden. May we learn to realize that within our nature and our life, nothing is free from the stain of sin. If we did not have God's grace, we would have perished long ago. Hallelujah! With the Lord there is grace.
Although we exalt the Lord's grace, we dare not under- estimate sin. God hates sin, whether it is in the worldly people or in the heart of the saints. It is a glorious thing to preach God's grace, and we should faithfully strive to preach God's salvation. But to preach God's grace and at the same time tolerate man's sin, that is, compromise with and tolerate evil, is not only a misunderstanding of God's grace but an insult to His grace as well. Whether God deals with man according to grace or the law, sin has to be judged and rejected. Those who boast in the name of grace, but still take pleasure in sin, probably do not yet know God's grace. "Should we continue in sin that grace may abound?" (Rom. 6:1). Every regenerated person should answer, "Absolutely not!"
One thing that breaks the hearts of the faithful saints of God is the fact that man does not consider sin as sin; man has invented many new terms to cover up sin. But the more lamentable thing is that believers, the regenerated ones, have looked too lightly upon sin. What a pity that the consciousness of sin that God has given to many of us is gradually lost. I am not saying that we have not struggled with sin. Indeed we have. At the beginning of his Christian life, every genuinely regenerated person surely has received a new nature that hates and abhors sin. He has probably exercised much strength to oppose sin. But the frequent defeats and frequent victory of sin over him gradually put in him a self-excusing heart. He may think that it is impossible to overcome. To sin has become habitual, and the voice of the accusing conscience is no longer as strong as before. What a degradation this is! Regrettably, these ones may know the teaching of 1 John 1:9 and may taunt God's holiness, thinking that God's grace means exoneration. If after they sin they will be forgiven as soon as they ask for forgiveness, what should keep them from sinning more? Although they have not said this with their mouth, is not their heart thinking this way? This is the reason that many believers have failed. They have lost their feeling toward sin. The spiritual sense is very similar to the physical senses. If a person suffers too much hurt and goes through too much abuse, his senses will become dull. When we disregard our sins, the feeling of our conscience will become increasingly dull. Every time we sin and do not confess it, and every time we disregard sin, our conscience becomes that much harder. In the end, the evil and loathsomeness of sin is diminished and the feeling toward sin is paralyzed.
Have we not failed often in the small things? Many times, the conscience does condemn us of the little lies, the little unfaithfulnesses, the little unrighteousnesses, and the little failures. But we comfort ourselves by saying that these things are insignificant. In this way, we push aside the condemnation of the conscience and become calloused. Under such circumstances, our feeling toward sin suffers a killing blow. If we tolerate the condemnation of the conscience once and refuse to confess our sin, we will not be able to remove that sin. Spontaneously, we forego the standard of God's holiness. Indeed, we should not be afraid to be over-sensitive about sin! If we would judge ourselves and remove and reject immediately what our conscience condemns, our feeling toward sin will become more and more sensitive. A victorious saint is a believer who judges himself. Just as a sinner is afraid of the punishment of sin (hell), in the same way a believer should be afraid of the power of sin. We should be careful and not harden our hearts, lest we lose our sensitive feeling toward sin. Once we lose our spiritual feelings, our spiritual life will dry up. Those who disregard sin will despise God's grace as well. Those who know the horror of sin and who have sunk into a state of helplessness will treasure God's grace as rare jewels when they receive it. If we regard sin as insignificant, the grace of forgiveness will be but a common thing.
