Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Welcome to Gospel in Life. During January, we're inviting our listeners to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. If you'd like to learn more, keep listening at the end of today's podcast for details. Have you ever wondered what it really means to live a great life? The Bible says the Ten Commandments aren't confining rules, but a framework for building a life of true greatness. Today, Tim Keller takes an in-depth look at one of the Ten Commandments and helps us understand what it means to live the way God designed us to: free, whole, and rooted in His love.

Guest (Male): My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there," or "Sit on the floor by my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him? But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of Him to whom you belong?

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For He who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you commit adultery but do not commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment! What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such a faith save him?

Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. This is God's word.

Tim Keller: Last week and this week, we're looking at the eighth commandment. We've been moving through the Ten Commandments, and the eighth commandment is, "Thou shalt not steal." Last week, we mentioned one of the most intriguing verses, Ephesians 4:28, which says, "Let the thief no longer steal, but let him give to those with a need."

That is putting it in its most startling way: a thief hasn't stopped being a thief until he's generous. Unless, to put it another way, to obey the eighth commandment, it's not enough simply to not steal. To obey the eighth commandment, you must be radically generous. You have to be radically generous, or you're a thief, according to the Bible.

Radical generosity is more than just the willingness to shell out the money. Radical generosity is an attitude of life. It's an attitude toward your possessions. It's an attitude toward yourself. It's a willingness to lend your possessions, a willingness to not be so possessive of your possessions, to not be so protective of your space, of your things, of your time, of your money. It's an attitude toward your space and yourself. It's letting people in. It's being unusually sensitive to see needs and meet them.

I remember after a Bible study one morning, the woman in whose home the Bible study was meeting approached the Bible study leader, almost with tears in her eyes. She said, "You can't have this Bible study here anymore. My furniture is getting all nicked up, and the coffee cake crumbs are being ground into my rug." The Bible study leader looked at her and said, "My dear friend, someday the earth is going to burn up in the sun. All the rugs will be burned up. But people, the people in this room, and the Word of God will last forever. Do you want to put your money into something that will burn up or into something that will last forever?" He was rude but right.

If you're not radically generous, you're a thief. Now, what's the rationale? The rationale for that remarkable statement is the Christian understanding of wealth. Capitalism says, by itself, that your money is your own and you can do with it what you want. Communism or socialism says your money, the money that you earn, is the people's, and you must do with it as the community needs.

A Christian says the money you earn is God's, and you must do with it as He directs. Those are three very different systems. Capitalism's always had a problem, the problem of social injustice. How do you really lay a powerful enough motivation on people that they'll be generous? Communism has a similar problem, only it's a motivation problem. Communism has the problem of taking away ownership from people, and then they lack motivation for production. They also lack the human dignity that comes with ownership.

Christianity says the wealth that you have, you enjoy and it's yours to take care of as a trustee, but you must give it generously as your owner directs. That's God. He directs that you give it to the work of the Gospel, to the poor, and to Christians with needs. As a result, you can say if that money was yours and you're not generous with it, you're being stingy. But if that money is somebody else's and you're not generous with it as the owner directs, it's robbery. It's embezzlement. And that's why we can say a thief is no longer a thief when he's generous. That's when he stops being a thief, when he's radically generous.

Now, why spend another week on it? Because the Bible is so full of this teaching. A number of people said, "Why don't you get back and preach on sex again?" And I will. And yet, frankly, the Bible doesn't say as much about sex as it does about money. In fact, the entire Gospel of Luke is almost about money.

The thing we're going to talk about today is a very important principle that we see here and throughout Scripture, and that is: your attitude toward your wealth and your possessions is not an incidental or a peripheral or an optional issue. It's at the very essence of what faith is, and it's at the heart of what it is to be a Christian. It's not like I can be a Christian and then what I do with my wealth and possessions is something I'll get to someday. This passage tells us, and the Bible tells us, that your attitude toward wealth and possessions is of the essence of faith. It's at the heart of being a Christian.

Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine from England. He called me a week ago and said, "Pray for me. I'm going to Romania." I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, we here in England have many contacts with the Christians in Romania. Of course, Romania has been a closed country, and the Christians have been persecuted. Now that the doors are open, we're going to visit our friends. We're going to take them Romanian Bibles because the border's open. Pray for us. We want to encourage them, but especially pray for this."

This is what he told me: of all the Eastern Bloc countries, the church is the most vital in the places where it has been the most persecuted. Romania has the most vital of all the Eastern Bloc churches because it's been the most persecuted. Pray that now that there's freedom there, it won't just go down the drain spiritually. You can be glib and make a great mistake and be oversimplified and say, "Well, isn't that amazing? We hear that the church in China, when the missionaries were kicked out, when the Communists took over and they began persecuting the church, that was the very thing the Chinese church needed, and the Chinese church has flourished." You can be glib and say that's the difference between them and us. That's why they have so much vitality, because of persecution. And that is a mistake. It's a superficial analysis.

The difference is materialism. It's the persecution, yes, but the persecution has set it so that the difference between them and us is materialism. Those churches have no buildings. Those churches have few possessions. They share what they have. They're like the early church. The early church amazed the Romans because of two things in which they stood out from the culture: number one, their sexual purity, and number two, their financial promiscuity. They were sexually pure but they were promiscuous with their money. They gave it all over the place.

The world was amazed. In fact, a few months ago, I read this: one of the early Roman emperors, a man named Julian, desperately tried to stamp out Christians. He lived in the third century AD, and the Christians kept multiplying and multiplying and multiplying, and they were taking over everything. At one point, Julian wrote this very disgusted letter to one of his pagan priest friends. In it, he says, "I don't know what to do. The Christians are multiplying, and you know why they're multiplying?"

This is what he said: "Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of these Christians as their charity to strangers. The impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor but for ours as well." Isn't that amazing? Here was a Roman emperor trying to figure out what is the reason that Christianity is spreading like wildfire? What gives it its dynamic? Of course, Julian wasn't a Christian; he couldn't understand everything. But he saw what the rest of the Roman world saw. What gave it its attractive power? Radical generosity. The Jews took care of the Jewish poor, the Greeks took care of the Greek poor, and the Romans took care of the Roman poor, but these Christians are promiscuous about this stuff. They just dump their generosity all over everybody. It's unheard of. And not only that, it's unbelievably attractive.

Now, why do you think in many ways the church spreads in persecuted places? Largely because of the way Christians are radically generous with one another and with the people around them. They stand out. How do we do? Do we stand out? Is the world marveling? This particular passage we read says the way you can tell real faith, the way you can tell true saving faith, is that it inevitably leads to radical generosity. In fact, this passage says real faith, not nominal faith, not just a claim or profession of Christianity, but real faith has three characteristics: it's radically generous, it's radically gracious, and it's radically practical.

First, radically generous. I'm looking at these verses: "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to those who did not have mercy. But mercy triumphs over judgment." And then it goes on in verse 14 and says, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can that faith save him?" How do you know the difference between saving faith and just emotional or lip service? The answer is radical generosity.

It says on judgment day, the way we can tell people who have got real faith is by their mercy. There will be judgment without mercy for those who have shown no mercy. Now, the word "mercy" is interesting here. In the New Testament, mercy can have a broader and a more specific meaning. In the broad sense, mercy is just the way we use it: seeing someone and loving them and giving them help. But the specific meaning in the Bible is to help somebody with their economic, physical, practical needs.

For example, in Matthew 18, there's a story about a king who has a servant who owes him 10,000 talents and he forgives him the debt. He wipes out his economic debt. At the end, he's very angry at the servant, and he says to the servant, "Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?" The economic help was mercy. When the blind men, when Jesus was going by, the blind men would call out, "Son of Man, have mercy on me!" What was he doing? Was he just asking for forgiveness of sins? No, he was using the word "mercy" in the specific way: "I've got a physical problem. I've got a practical problem. I'm blind. Do something about my body. Do something about my physical suffering."

And the most important place is in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan finds a man lying in the road, he picks him up, he gives him transportation, he gives him medical care, he gives him a financial subsidy, he stays up all night and tends to his wounds. Practical work, social work. At the very end, Jesus says that's the one who had mercy. The word "mercy" has that specific meaning often in the Bible of economic, physical help.

In the context, what does the word "mercy" mean in verses 12 and 13? It's very clear. At the end of chapter one of James, James says, "True religion, religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless, is this: to look after orphans and widows in their affliction." And then in chapter two, we read in verse 6, it says, "Let's honor the poor man." And down in verse 15, it says if you have faith without deeds, what good is that? And then gives an example of the mercy we're talking about. If you see someone without basic necessities and you don't deal with their need, if you don't feed them if they're hungry, what good is that? It's very clear: judgment will be without mercy for those who have shown no mercy, but mercy triumphs over judgment. That simply says that on judgment day, your mercy will show whether or not your faith is real. If there's mercy having come out of that faith, that shows that your faith is real and you will not be judged. But if there's been no mercy, then that shows your faith is not real and you will be.

This does not teach that God saves us because of our generosity. It teaches that if we believe and are saved because of our faith in Jesus' grace and mercy, then there will be grace and mercy growing up out of any real faith like that. James tells us a lot about faith. Some people are very concerned; they find faith a very mysterious thing. This chapter can tell you a great deal about faith.

Paul says, "We walk by faith, not by sight." Paul never says we walk by faith, not by reason. Paul never says we walk by faith, not by thinking, because faith and reason, faith and thinking, are not opposed to each other. Faith and sight are opposed to each other because faith is being controlled by the truth.

Let me give you an illustration. You have to have surgery. That's a scary thing. So you start to ask around: who's a good surgeon? Someone says to you, "I know a woman who is a marvelous surgeon who does that kind of surgery." So you begin to investigate this surgeon. You talk to other people who she has operated on. You talk to other surgeons and find out what they think. You're even able to somehow find medical records to find out how this woman is doing, and you find out everybody says she's the best. She's never lost a patient. She's never had an unsuccessful surgery. The evidence is overwhelming and you say, "Fantastic." So you sign up.

On the day of surgery, you chicken out. You start to get there and you smell the antiseptic, you go into the hospital, maybe you see a few surgical tools lying around, you see some bloody gloves lying around, and you panic and you say, "I can't do it." What's happened? You've lost your faith in her. Why? Because you got new information? Because you were reasoned out of it? No. Because you're going by sight. You're being controlled by what you see. You're being controlled by appearances. You're being controlled by feelings instead of what you know to be true. Are you going to walk by faith or by sight? Are you going to go in there and do it because you said to yourself, "Look, I need it. This is the best person," or are you going to walk by faith or by sight?

Give you another illustration. Single women can identify with this, but all of us can understand it. Some great-looking guy asks you out. That's wonderful. You're pretty excited. But one of your friends says, "Now listen, let me just tell you something. He's a nice guy, he's a wonderful guy, but be careful. If you tell him anything very intimate or secret, he is a blabbermouth. It will be all over, even a big city, it'll be all over. Everybody will know about it. He always likes to talk about personal things and you feel real intimate, but then he tells people, so be careful. He's a great guy, have a good time, but be careful." This one friend tells you. Then another friend tells you the same thing. Then a third friend tells you the same thing, and you begin to say, "You know what? There must be something to this. I better really be careful."

And then you go out. Boy, he is good-looking. Boy, it is a nice place. Boy, the food was really great. And he starts to ask you, "Tell me more about yourself." Now, are you going to walk by faith or by sight? You're starting to lose your faith in what you know to be true because all those warnings start to begin to fade because you don't have those people right alongside of you. You're not hearing their voices in your ear. You see his face. Are you going to walk by faith or are you going to walk by sight? When you lose your faith, it doesn't mean you started to think. You lose your faith when you stop thinking.

Another illustration. You need a detective. Somebody says there's the best detective; he never fails. So you call the guy up and he comes over to see you, and it's Columbo. He's blind in one eye, he dresses like a slob, and as he comes up to see you, he backs his car into the telephone pole and he comes out and says, "I'm so sorry." Then he comes up and says, "What can I do for you?" You sit there and say, "I can't believe it." Are you going to walk by faith or by sight? In fact, the whole Columbo series is based on people who walk by sight instead of faith. They maybe hear that this is a homicide detective, a good one, but he acts like such a buffoon that what always happens—the whole idea of the series—is that the criminals start to say, "Come on, look at this guy. Look at his appearance." What I see tells me that this guy is incompetent.

When Jesus talks about faith, He always says faith is not the opposite of thinking. Doubt is the absence of thinking. He says, for example, and He's talking about possessions, in Matthew 6, "Don't worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or your body or what you will put on. Don't worry about those things. Consider the lilies of the field. God takes care of them. Consider the birds of the air. God takes care of them. Won't He take care of you, O ye of little faith? The pagans run after these things, material possessions, but not you, O ye of little faith." Do you see what He's saying? If you want to have faith, you have to consider. That means to think. Consider the lilies of the field. Consider the birds of the air. Argue with yourself. Think.

The cults have a different view of faith. The cults say believe, don't think. They say have faith, don't think, don't ask questions, don't sit down and wonder about these things. That's the exact opposite of what Jesus says faith is. He says if you want to have faith, you have to think. Doubt is the absence of thinking. In Luke chapter 8, Jesus is asleep in the storm, and the disciples are seeing the storm and they're seeing the waves and they're saying, "O my word, we're going to perish." Jesus wakes up and He looks at them and says, "Where is your faith?" He doesn't say you need more faith. He says, "Where is your faith? Get it out! It ought to be here." He says, "Look, you saw me raise people from the dead. You saw me promise to you that I was going to take you this place and this place and this place. You saw these things. You knew what I could do. You knew who I was. And yet when I was just out of sight, you were looking at the waves. You were looking at the waves and so you were scared." He doesn't say you need more faith. He doesn't act like faith is this mysterious thing that has to be whomped up. He says you know what you should have been doing. Where is your faith? Get it out. It ought to be here.

Jesus specifically applies this to possessions. He says if you worry about possessions, if you're consumed about money and about what you eat and what you drink, you show that you don't really know, you're not being controlled by what the Bible says about God the Father. God the Father owns everything. God the Father will take care of you. He clothed the grass of the field. He takes care of the birds of the air. What James is saying here, what Jesus is saying in Matthew, is simply this: an enslavement to visible things calls into question our faith in invisible things. Enslavement to visible things radically calls into question our real faith in invisible things. If you know that there's a God who's taking care of you, who owns everything, that changes you totally in your attitude toward other things.

You look at things and you say, "Wait a minute. Look, if you have an opportunity to bless somebody by giving a lot of time or giving a lot of money, right away you say, 'I can't afford it.'" At that minute, you have to decide, will I walk by faith or by sight? Will I be controlled by what I know to be true—that there's a God who's created me, that owns everything, that can give me everything I need—or will I be controlled by the ads in the paper that tell me what standard of living I should be at? Are you looking at the waves or are you looking at Jesus? Are you walking by faith or by sight? Don't you see that the essence of faith is to be controlled by who God is, and that will show itself up in your attitude toward your money and toward your possessions and toward things? Real faith is radically generous. That's the main thing that this passage teaches.

The other two things I can be briefer about. Real faith is radically gracious. You know up here where it says, "My dear brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom?" That's an interesting verse. On the one hand, I believe that is pointing out something that's been true throughout history, and that is that as a general rule in the history of the world, Christian movements have most often, dynamic Christian movements, have most often started with the poor. It's true. Most of the early Christians were poor. Most of the great revivals happened among the poor.

And you know why? Because I believe that poor people very often can see the game. When you're playing a social game and you're winning, you don't see that it's a game, and you don't like anybody calling it a game. It's when you're losing you like to call it a game. You know how that is. Those of you who in high school were on the out of the social life, it was easy because you were losing to say, "What a game they're all playing." If you were winning, you didn't think it was a game.

All human beings are poor because they're dependent. A poor person economically is a dependent person. When a person's got enough money, we call them independently wealthy. If you have enough money, you're independent; you don't need anybody giving you money. You don't need even to go out and get a job; you're independently wealthy. And that's why economic poverty is a matter of dependence. But really, every person in relationship to God, no matter how much money you have in the bank, is spiritually poor. You are dependent every minute for every breath on God. Sometimes only the really economically poor can see that.

But what the Bible teaches is that anybody who wants to belong to God, anybody who's going to be saved, anyone who has real faith, is poor in spirit. Matthew 5:3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Without poverty of spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Do you hear that? You can't. Poverty of spirit, what's it mean? To be poor in wallet means I'm bankrupt; I have nothing with which I can make good my debt. To be poor in spirit is to come to God and say, "I have nothing good to give you. Even my best deeds aren't good enough. I owe you everything. Save me for Jesus' sake." If you are poor in spirit, you will be rich in faith. To be poor in spirit means to go like this: "I see that I'm saved strictly by God's mercy and riches." And then when you look at a person who's broken, when you look at a person who's ruined, when you look at a person who's messed up, you know you're looking in a mirror. No matter how ugly it is, you know you're looking in a mirror because a person who's poor in spirit says no matter how good I look physically, no matter how much money I've got in my wallet, I know that that's what I look like to God apart from Jesus Christ. And so it makes you radically gracious, gracious to the messed-up people around you.

Let me put it like this. Let me just show you how it changes you. Sometimes married people do a very dangerous thing. Married people often will say to each other, "Do you love me?" The other person says, "Of course I love you," which is what you have to say. "Of course I love you." But then the first person might say something very dangerous. They say this: "Why do you love me?" Now, when that happens, everything is on the precipice. And there's one way to go. And the one way to go is this: "Well, the reason I love you is because you serve me, because you're a really great person, you never blow up, you never lose your temper, you never seem to get upset, you never get down." And will that make the other person feel great? The other person is saying, "Oh my word, what pressure! How awful! I begin to feel bound by this kind of love." What you want to hear is this: "I love you because I love you. Nothing can get behind my love. There's no other cause for my love except itself. My love is its own rationale." And then you're liberated. That's the kind of love every person needs to know. That's the kind of love God gives you. God comes to you and says, "I'm giving you my mercy and love not because you're good, but because I love you."

That liberates. And the reason it liberates is because you're able to feel rich when you realize you're saved not on the basis of your good deeds, but simply because of His mercy. You talk like this: you say, "The stars may fall from the heaven, but His love for me will stand. And it will triumph. I've got problems; it will triumph. I am not loved because I'm good; I will be good because I'm loved. My pride, my bad habits, my sins will all fall before His triumphant love because He loves me because He loves me because He loves me." Anybody who's grabbed that becomes gracious to people around them. Absolutely gracious.

Last thing: real faith is radically practical. This is the way I can encourage you. Right here at the end, it says in verse 15 and 16, if you see someone without daily food and clothes, and you say, "Go, I wish you well," if you only talk and you don't do anything, what good is that? It says, "Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." The last thing I can tell you is this: some of you are sitting here and saying, "Well, I hear what I'm supposed to be feeling. You say I should be feeling generous because of God's grace. I should be feeling confident because I trust in the One who owns everything. I should be feeling like that, but I don't. I don't feel like that. I got a lot of inner turmoil, but I don't feel that generous. It's not easy for me to let people into my space. I realize what James is saying, but I don't feel like that."

That's okay. Why? Because real Christian love is never sentiment anyway; it's action. With all due respect, do you think when Jesus was on the cross giving Himself in the greatest act of love in history, He was full of warm, toasty feelings toward us? Do you think He was saying, "Oh, I feel such wonderful, warm feelings toward these people who are putting nails and thorns and spears into me"? Do you think there was anything like a warm, toasty feeling in His heart? No. But He loved us. He gave. And if anyone is here saying, "You know, I see how I'm supposed to feel, but I don't. I see what James is saying is true. I wish it was that way. I wish," and you're discouraged, don't be afraid. Your discouragement is a sign that God's working in you. Your desire to be like that is a sign that God's working in you. Your discouragement is evidence that you shouldn't be discouraged because it's the beginning of grace.

So what should you be doing? Don't worry that you somehow have to have all this incredible amount of faith and love. Just take a look around you. How much should you be giving? Last week, we talked about the tithe. Don't let that bother you for a minute. How much should you be giving? More. Almost every one of you, more. Just start with that. Don't worry about how much it should be; just start with more. And begin to realize ways in which you're selfish, ways in which you're looking at the ads and walking by sight and not by faith. Begin to look around for the needs; there's plenty of opportunities.

The last thing I'll say: if there's anybody here who has never really gotten a grip on being poor in spirit, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. Before you can be rich toward other people, you've got to be poor toward God. And that means this morning, you may need to say to God something like this: "Lord, I now see I've always been poor, but I've never been poor in spirit till now. I've never come to the place where I can say to you, 'Lord, I have nothing to make good my debt.' And so I ask that you'd save me strictly because of the riches which are mine through Jesus Christ, because of what He did." When you're poor in spirit, you then can begin to be rich in faith. It's not until you're poor in spirit can you begin to say, "He loves me because He loves me," and begin to feel rich and to say the stars may fall from heaven, but the love that I have from God will stand. Nothing can take it away. Don't you know that He's chosen those who are poor to be rich in faith? Let's pray.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your monthly partnership helps us to plan and steward our resources throughout the year to be the most effective in reaching people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. And as a small thank you for your monthly support, we will mail you a physical copy of each new Life in the Gospel quarterly journal that you can enjoy and share with others. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com/partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1990. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.