[Note: This sermon expounds Luke 14:7–14. Delivered 25 January 1981, Montreal.]
Today we continue our study of the Lord's teaching, and we look at Luke 14:7–14. The last three sessions and this one form a four-part series on being fit for the kingdom of God — which is, of course, the most important question of all. Let us read the passage. The background is that the Lord has been invited to dinner by a Pharisee — not with the best of intentions, since the first two verses of the chapter tell us that they were watching him closely. He was being put under the microscope. He healed a man with dropsy at the table and then, observing how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable.
"When you are invited by anyone to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honour, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and he who invited you both will come and say to you, 'Give place to this man,' and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, 'Friend, go up higher'; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." He said also to his host: "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."
Now, the question immediately arises: is this simply moralising advice? Just a general exhortation to be humble and generous? Many commentators, to be frank, are rather embarrassed by this passage and leave it at that. But to think this way is to fail completely to understand the Lord's teaching. The Lord is not speaking to Christians here — he is speaking to Pharisees who consider themselves saved, who are in no need of moral tips, but who desperately need to understand the way of salvation. If we do not understand the principles behind the Lord's teaching, we cannot understand what he is saying to them. And we have already seen, in the previous messages of this series, what those principles are.
The three fundamental principles are these. The first is justification: God in his grace freely forgives our sins through Christ. The second is sanctification: that forgiveness is not an end in itself but produces, necessarily and essentially, a change of conduct. When grace truly enters a person's life, it changes them — as a medicine that is swallowed into the system begins to change the body's chemistry from within. Grace that is accepted in some nominal way but never internalized — like a medicine kept in a pocket rather than swallowed — does nothing. The third principle is judgment: God will deal with us as we have dealt with others. These three points — justification, sanctification, judgment — are not separable. They form one connected reality.
The clearest illustration of this is the parable of the unforgiving servant. He received forgiveness — genuinely, freely, as a gift. But that forgiveness never entered his system; it never changed his heart. When a fellow servant came and begged him for mercy, he had that man thrown into prison. His received forgiveness produced no corresponding graciousness in him. And the Lord's verdict? The forgiveness previously given was withdrawn. The connection of point two to point three — of sanctification to judgment — is this: God will deal with you in precisely the way you have dealt with others. If you have not forgiven, you will not be forgiven. Even if forgiveness was given, it is withdrawn. This seems to be lost on the great majority of Christians today, who assume that once justified they are secure regardless of how they behave. The Lord's teaching simply does not permit that assumption.
Now we can understand what the Lord is saying to these Pharisees. He is not giving them a social etiquette lesson. He is saying: look at your conduct. You come to a banquet and immediately seek the highest seats, the most prestigious positions. You give feasts only to those who can repay you. Your conduct shows that your whole orientation is self-advancement and worldly reward. And do you not know — verse 11 — that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled by God, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted by God? Your conduct at this very dinner table is evidence that you are not fit for the kingdom. Not because the Lord is imposing some arbitrary rule, but because conduct is the expression of what is inside. Just as salt that has lost its flavour is fit for nothing and will be cast out and trampled underfoot, a person whose conduct shows no evidence of God's grace working inwardly will not be fit for the kingdom.
This is the urgent message to the church today as much as to these Pharisees: we cannot afford the comfortable assumption that our salvation is secure regardless of how we live. The Lord looks at our conduct. He will determine, at the judgment, whether we are fit for the kingdom on the basis of our conduct — not in the sense of salvation by works, but in the sense that genuine faith necessarily and visibly produces changed conduct, and the absence of that changed conduct is evidence that grace has not truly been received and is not truly operative.
[Continues in Part B]
# "For Whoever Exalts Himself Shall Be Humbled" — Luke 14:7–14 (Part B) — Works of Faith; True Humility; Generosity as Trust in God
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Luke 14:7–14, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 25 January 1981, Montreal.]
When people hear that conduct matters for salvation, they immediately protest: but we are saved by faith, not by works! And this is quite right — but only if we understand what Paul means by works. Paul very carefully distinguishes two kinds of works. There are works of the law — works performed in order to earn God's favour through law-keeping, expressing trust in the law rather than in Christ. These cannot save, because the law condemns rather than justifies; it shows us what we must be without supplying the power to become it. But there are also works of faith — the conduct that flows from genuine, living faith in God. Paul says in Ephesians 2:10 that we were "created in Christ Jesus for good works." Not saved by works; saved for works. The works of faith are not the cause of our salvation; they are the inevitable fruit of it. To confuse the two kinds of works, and to use Paul's rejection of the one as an excuse to dismiss the other, is precisely the error that produces the comfortable but dangerous Christianity of our day.
The Lord is speaking about works of faith in this passage. And the remarkable thing about the works he describes — taking the lower seat, inviting those who cannot repay you — is that they are impossible to perform genuinely from the heart unless you have real faith in God. Consider the matter of humility. Why would anyone take a lower seat in this world? The world's wisdom is exactly the opposite: assert yourself, show your quality, demonstrate you have what it takes. In business, in a career, in social life, the way up is to show you deserve to be up. If you take the low seat, people will step on you. The person who always defers, who never asserts, is not praised for humility — they are disregarded. To take the lower seat in any meaningful sense therefore requires faith in God — faith that he will exalt you in his time, that his exaltation is worth more than any social advancement you might achieve by self-promotion. Without that faith, humility is either impossible or merely a performance, a kind of false modesty that is really another form of self-promotion.
The same is true of genuine generosity. The Lord says: invite those who cannot repay you, and your reward will come at the resurrection of the just. How many people, when they give money or time or hospitality, are actually looking to the resurrection for their reward? Honestly: most giving in the church is motivated by a combination of social approval, tax advantages, and the desire to quiet a troubled conscience — the pictures of suffering in far-off places make it hard to enjoy one's food, so twenty dollars makes the conscience settle down again. None of this is the faith-driven generosity the Lord is speaking of. Real generosity expects no return in this life from those it serves; it trusts that God sees and keeps accounts and will repay in ways and at times that only he can arrange. Without faith in God, such giving is simply irrational — you give to those who give nothing back, in hope of a reward you are not even sure you believe in. It takes living faith to do this.
The same principle applies to the entire range of the Lord's teaching. "If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other." This is not mere moral advice or passive-aggressive social strategy. It is only possible for a person who has deep faith in God's justice — who trusts that every account will ultimately be settled by God, and therefore does not need to settle it themselves. Without that faith, you must settle the score yourself, because if you don't, no one will. Only if you genuinely believe that God governs this world and will see that justice is done — not one small detail will be overlooked — can you afford to let the offence pass. This is the work of faith: not something separate from faith, but the direct expression and evidence of it.
We can therefore sum up the Lord's teaching here in one sentence: only through a faith that is manifested in daily conduct — in how you handle matters of social status, in how you use your money, in how you respond to those who wrong you — is faith revealed to be living, saving, ongoing faith in the living God. "The just shall live by faith" — not faith that was exercised once at some meeting in the past and is now safely filed away, but a present, active, daily trust in God that is visibly and continuously expressed in the way one lives. This manifested faith is the evidence that God's grace has truly entered a person's life and is doing its transforming work. This is what makes a person fit — or unfit — for the kingdom of God.
Let us be quiet before God in prayer.