LUKE 6:27\u201342<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cGive to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
(Luke 6:30)<\/i>.<\/p>\n
When I was a young pastor, I was working in a community in which there were a lot of derelicts. Seeking to apply the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. I opened our house to anyone who needed shelter and help. One night, when our house was already full, there was a knock at the door. It was someone else who wanted a place to sleep. I had to send him to another church.<\/p>\n
From this incident, I began to see that applying Jesus\u2019 statements literally could be very problematic. If people find out you\u2019ll give people anything they ask of you, soon you won\u2019t have anything left! I found help in the Didache<\/i>, a book dating from the second century, written by the church fathers. Speaking of charity, these wise men said to let your alms sweat in your palms until you see where your gift is going (Didache<\/i> 1:6).<\/p>\n
Scholars call these short, pithy statements of Jesus \u201caphorisms.\u201d In them Jesus sets down for us very weighty principles in universal terms. I learned that it is important, as a method of interpretation, to take Jesus\u2019 aphorisms in the context of the whole of Scripture and in the context of the whole of Jesus\u2019 teaching. In other words, we are not to take these proverbial sayings out of their biblical context.<\/p>\n
For instance, when Jesus says, \u201cYou may ask for anything in my name, and I will do it\u201d (John 14:14), we are not to understand that God is at our beck and call. We have to take this aphorism in the context of the whole biblical teaching on prayer. In John 14, Jesus is speaking about our attitudes more than about our actions.<\/p>\n
Just so, Luke 6:30 is speaking of our attitude. We are to have an open-handed attitude<\/i> toward the needy, but at the same time we are to be \u201cwise as serpents and harmless as doves\u201d in our actions<\/i> toward the needy. Jesus Himself sums it up for us in the next verse: \u201cDo to others as you would have them do to you\u201d (Luke 6:31).<\/p>\n
CORAM DEO<\/b><\/p>\n
Judges 8\u20139<\/p>\n
Luke 8:22\u201356<\/p>\n
Faith comes before works, although they go hand in hand in practice. This means that it is our attitudes<\/i> that need adjusting more than our actions, because our actions flow from our attitudes. Do an attitude-check right now. Read Luke 6:27\u201338, and open the attitudes of your heart before the searing light of Jesus\u2019 holy aphorisms.<\/p>\n
For further study: Deuteronomy 15:7\u201318; Proverbs 3:27\u201328; 25:21\u201322<\/i><\/p>\n
tuesday<\/p>\n
april<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LUKE 6:27\u201342 \u201cGive to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back\u201d (Luke 6:30). When I was a young pastor, I was working in a community in which there were a lot of derelicts. Seeking to apply the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. I … Continue reading “THE APHORISMS OF JESUS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}