Indeed, I forgot one or two things, and I did forget to pass on the greetings of the Spirit. Now, we have been, in this series of messages, studying together the fundamentally important truths of the Word of God concerning regeneration and renewal. And there can be absolutely nothing more important to our spiritual life than to clearly understand what the Word of God teaches in these matters of regeneration and renewal. And renewal involves the renewal of our minds. That when we are regenerate, when we become new people in Christ, our whole way of thinking has to be changed.
And the great problem with many Christians is that they are regenerate, or they think themselves to be regenerate, but you notice that their thinking has not changed at all, or very little. That their thought patterns are basically the same old thought patterns that governed their lives when they were non-Christians. And you know what is the result of that? The result is that if you think in the old ways, you will also behave in the old ways. There is no way you can behave in a new way when your thinking is in the old way. If your thought life is still a very selfish one, there is no way your conduct will show unselfishness. Because what you think is what will determine the way you behave, the way you act.
And as you look through the churches, and as you look through Christianity today, you have to concede that there is very little that is new in the quality of life and conduct. That in fact, though they say they are Christians, when you look at their lifestyle, the way they do things, the way they say things, the way they conduct themselves from day to day, you have to concede that they behave more or less like any non-Christian. Why? Very simple. The thinking has not been renewed. And when you don't think in a new way, you cannot behave in a new way.
And that is why Paul says in Romans 12:1 and 2, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Because if that doesn't happen, you will simply be conformed to the world. And if we are not renewed, then what's the use of being regenerate? What's the use of that? If it's just a label we can hang around our neck that says, "I am born again," we can print that on a T-shirt and walk around with it. What good will that do if we are still the same old people with the same old mental habits and the same selfishness and the same critical attitude, the same petty nastiness that we were before?
And when we look at people and we evaluate people, what do we always see? We always see their faults. Oh, their faults stand out a mile. I mean, it's hard to see their quality. Where can you see the quality? But it's always the fault that we somehow, with our detector eyes, can search out with the utmost thoroughness. Our thinking has to be renewed. And until that happens, this whole series of messages — and we have come now to the 30th in the series — this whole series of messages will accomplish nothing if it does not help to bring about a renewing of the mind, changing fundamentally the way we think, the way we look at things, the way we look at people, the way we look at life.
And this is what we aim to do in this message too. We must come to a new way of looking at people. Because the Christian life has to do with people. It has to do with our relationship with people. And until we have a totally new way of looking at people, then the way we deal with people, the way we relate to people, the way we react to people, will always be in the old way. Resentful, irritable, critical, selfish. The same old things. And those of you who live together in various households know perfectly what I mean. Christianity would be reduced to a theory that is impossible to practice if we do not know how to think in new ways, if we don't know how to let God renew our mind.
Regeneration, renewal, and perfection. We are to be renewed towards the perfection that the Lord himself commanded us to have. "Be perfect," as it says in Matthew 5:48, "as your heavenly Father is perfect." And we sigh and we look at these unattainable goals and think to ourselves, this will never be attainable all the days of our life. And we'll be always left with a guilt complex, struggling in defeat, moaning over our failures, wiping our tears, trying again, only to know that we will wipe them again, not too long, and not too much further down the road.
Now, perfection in Scripture can be summed up quite simply in the Lord's own words. That the first and great commandment is to love God with all our hearts, our minds, our soul, our strength. And the second is like unto it, that we shall love the neighbor as ourselves. Words that we have become very familiar with, but unfortunately we don't really understand. Why is it important to understand? Because it's important that we change our thinking to God's way of thinking. If you think you understand, let me try to define the problem in this first part of the message a little more clearly for you. Let's try to define the problem and see whether you do understand.
Let me start at 1 John 4, verse 20, the second half of the verse. 1 John 4, verse 20. And let's try to use this verse to try and define the problem more clearly. 1 John 4:20: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." We'll deal only with the second half of the verse, and I'm using this verse simply to help us to define the problem and to show you that the scriptural way of thinking is simply not our way of thinking, and that's where the problem is.
You know, the strongest evidence that the Bible is inspired by God is the fact that the Bible thinks in categories completely foreign to the way we think. And I mean we, not as non-Christians, but as Christians. That as Christians, we do not know how to think in the categories in which the Bible thinks, which shows that this Word that is before us is not the word of man, because man doesn't think like that. He can't even understand the logic of it. Do you understand the logic? Let's try it.
The second half of this verse says this: "For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." Can you understand the logic? No way can you understand this logic as a carnal man. This logic makes no sense whatsoever. Think a little more carefully, just so you can check your own thought patterns and how different they are from the biblical thought patterns. The renewed mind thinks entirely differently. But there is something here that we can't follow. If, John says, if you do not love the brother whom you can see, how can you love God whom you do not see? Makes no sense. No sense whatever. Does it make sense to you? No, it doesn't make sense.
Why? The reason you don't love your brother is precisely because you see him. And what do you see when you look at him? Didn't comb his hair properly this morning. He has bad breath. He should have used — what is his mouthwash called? Whatever it is. Scope? Okay, Scope. Whatever it is. So what do you notice about him? You notice all these things. He didn't shave properly. I mean, look at the stubble all over his face. His tie is in the wrong direction. Put it down here in the middle. And his shirt collar is sticking out on it. Very annoying. Why can't these guys look decent, at least to begin with?
The problem with loving the brother is precisely because we see him. That's why we think — I mean, if we didn't see him, we could fantasize about him. Ah, he's so beautiful, his hair is so nice. And when you see him, oh, the reality is something quite different. It's rather like the effect — you see sometimes a movie star in a particular film, so handsome or so beautiful, whatever. And then another day, you see him on a TV talk show and the camera zooms in on the person and you have a shot — he doesn't look half as good as in the film. And in real life, he just doesn't look half as good. Have you realized that? It's amazing.
Because you see, when they're actually doing the film, they're so thoroughly made up and every line is touched up and every crease is moved away and every hair is in the place where the art director wants to have it. Every blemish is removed. But it seems that for these talk shows, they don't take any such precautions. And you are struck by the fact that on a talk show, they don't look half as good. And when you see them in real life, you would gulp even more. They just can't be the same guy. I mean, the guy in the film looked so good. This one? No, no. Don't be right. I've had that experience several times, being quite astonished that the person looked really quite different from what I thought the person was.
You see, the whole problem about loving the brother is precisely because you see him. If you didn't see him, if you only saw the person at his best, always made up — it's the same thing. I mean, you know a brother or sister in church, and you see him come to church and he looks smart. Nice tie here, right in the middle, right? Not to one side. I'm very careful about such things. Coat. Yep. But supposing you go to the brother's home or the sister's home and you see him in his rather petty slippers, his petty pajamas, petty thing, and all the nice clothing that he came to church in is no longer there. And you see him in day-to-day life, or when he gets up in the morning and his hair is standing up. And he's not yet put his dentures in place. Oh, that's it. You see what I mean? I think you begin to grasp it's very easy to understand.
We don't love the brother precisely because we see him. And when we see him, our x-ray eyes — oh, our eyes are really x-ray when it comes to this one — we can pick out every fault, every tiny fault, every flake of dandruff upon the hair. There is nothing hidden from the sharp gaze that we have when it comes to carnal things. Even when spiritual things stare us in the face we cannot see them, but carnal things — oh, we can see every hair that is out of place. And the reason we cannot love our brother is because we have these marvelous x-ray eyes.
And why do I love God? Very easy, because I don't see him. And when you don't see him, you never see a fault. I mean, you might not see the glories and the blessings, but that's okay, you don't see the fault either. And so, other people tell me how wonderful he is, okay, that's fine. You keep singing the beautiful songs about him, that'll be good enough for me. I at least can love the one I don't see somewhat better than the one I do see.
Why do so many marriages go to pieces soon after people get married? It's because after you got married, you really see the person as the person really is. And before the marriage, you never really saw the person as the person really is. And therefore after the marriage, when you see the person with all the blemishes, with all the faults, with all the — you can't love the person anymore. You don't love the person precisely because you can see the person. We can love God — we haven't seen him yet. And so, we can fantasize, we can imagine.
If Jesus came into this room today, if he walked in in an ordinary suit, like what I'm wearing, and simply walked in, strolled down, and sat down in a seat here, would you discern his glory? Would you know it's Jesus? No way. You might even see a fleck of dust on his coat. Jesus never has a fleck of dust on his coat, does he? Or does he? His feet will never be dirty, because somehow he walks through the dust and dust never clings to his feet, does it? But if his feet are dirty, then he can't be Jesus, is it? How we fantasize, how we imagine things. And therefore when we see the real person, we wouldn't even recognize Jesus if he walked into this room with his feet dirty, because he has walked the dust of this earth, and his garment spotted, because he stooped to help someone in the mud.
That's why I say the logic here we can't understand. This is not logic. It makes no sense to our minds. Read it again. What does John say? "For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." Doesn't make sense. It's not true to the carnal way of thinking. There must be some different premise from which John is working. There must be a spiritual way of thinking that we have not yet comprehended. But on our logic, this is not true to the carnal way of thinking. You're quite right. It is not true to the carnal way of thinking.
And this brings us to a fundamental principle of understanding the Word of God. You cannot understand the Word of God until your whole way of thinking changes. It is not whether you're intelligent or not intelligent. It is whether you're spiritual or not spiritual. And when you're not spiritual, it makes no sense. And even worse than that, you might try to interpret the spiritual by means of the carnal and make a greater mess out of the whole thing.
I'm trying just to define the problem for you. So if you think loving God and loving the neighbor are things you understood very well, you begin to realize after all, you didn't understand it well. At least the whole way of thinking that John states here is entirely based on some different type of logic which we have not understood. I think we would have to rephrase this sentence in some way that would make greater sense to us. But this sentence as it stands makes no sense to us.
Let's try to define the problem again from another angle. I'll leave you to think about it. I will not rush to provide you with an answer. But just so that you are fully aware that your thinking categories might not be the thinking categories of Scripture. Your logic is not biblical logic. The carnal man's way of thinking is quite different from the spiritual man's way of thinking. And you cannot make the Bible conform to your logic. It doesn't make sense on carnal logic.
Let's approach this from another angle. Let's turn to Matthew chapter 22, verse 39. Matthew 22:39. And here we will look at this great commandment, two great commandments directly. Let me read to you from verse 36 to 39 so we have the context. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."
And you say, oh, I know this very well. You know the words, but do you know the meaning? How easily we deceive ourselves by the familiarity of the sound of words without even beginning to comprehend what they mean. You say, well, what's the difficulty? Let me tell you where the difficulty is. Let's pin it down to a short phrase in verse 39: "A second commandment is like it." What does that mean? So you're very familiar with this passage. You tell me what it means. "Like it." What does that mean? Think on it. Why is the second commandment like the first? In what sense is it like the first? In what way is it like the first? Because they don't seem to be alike at all in any sense, in any way. In what way are they alike? I don't see any likeness. Do you see any likeness? Apart from the fact that both command a command to love, where is the likeness? That's where the likeness ceases.
How easily we think on these things. Let us say we drop the word "like" from this sentence. Would it make any difference to the meaning of the passage? Let's read it again like this in verse 39: "And a second is: you shall love your neighbor as yourself." A second is: you shall love. Why the word "like it"? Does the meaning change? On our logic, nothing has changed. But if we took the words "like it" out of this verse, we have entirely changed the meaning. We have lost a very important element. Do you realize that? Yet I have never heard a message preached on "like it" in here. Now here the "like" is not like or dislike. Of course it is that two things are like each other, comparable to each other, similar to each other in a very deep and striking way.
Let's take a look at the use of the same word "like" in John chapter 9, verse 9, to try and understand this more clearly. John 9:9. And this has to do with the man that was born blind, and the Lord Jesus healed the blind man so that he was able to see again. A man who was congenitally blind, blind from birth. And the Lord Jesus healed this man. Now because he was blind, he was condemned to only one profession, and that is to beg. There was no other profession open to him at the time.
Now look what happens after he was healed by the Lord and his sight restored. In verse 9 of chapter 9, some said, when they looked at this man who was healed, some said, "It is he." Others say, "No, but he is like him." You see that? There you have the word "like him." And then he said, "I am the man." It's not just "like me," I am the man. Some said, "It is he." Some said, "He is like him." He said, "I am the man." In other words, he was in fact the same person. Why did they have trouble identifying him? Because once he was blind but now he sees. And therefore there was a confusion as to whether it was the same man or not. And therefore some thought, yeah, in every other respect he is the same man, except for the fact that the one we used to know was blind but this guy we see standing in front of us is not blind. So he can't be the same man, but very, very well, in fact in every respect like that man, except with this difference, that he can see.
They're trying to understand the meaning of the word "like." A single person is not like another unless they are virtually identical, though with some difference. So we say that twins are like each other. You can say twins are indeed alike. We don't say they are the same person because they are not the same person. They are two different persons, but these two different persons are entirely alike. So we can't say they are the same, but we can say they are alike.
Two things are alike only in a very restricted sense. For example, here I have to spend a little time, because we are not very good at thinking at the best of times, and we are not very good at understanding the use of words, and therefore to renew the thought process, we have to understand the new patterns of thought. To understand new patterns of thought, we have to understand clear distinctions or similarities. For example, I do not say — you can say a bird is like a butterfly, or it is not like a butterfly. Is a bird like a butterfly? Well, only in the very restricted sense that both do fly. But in any other sense, a bird is certainly not like a butterfly.
But even in the sense in which a bird is like a butterfly, and that both can fly, that doesn't help us a lot, because the wing structure of a butterfly is quite different from the wing structure of a bird, and therefore the flight mechanics of a butterfly is quite different from the flight mechanics of a bird. And therefore to say that a bird is like a butterfly really has very little meaning. It is really saying next to nothing. It is about as meaningful as saying — apart from the fact that both fly, there is no other similarity in it. Both in their flight mechanics and in their wing structures, there is nothing similar between the two. So to say that one is like the other cannot be stated at all without making a very important limiting statement, saying they are like only in this very narrow and restricted sense.
To say that an Alsatian is like a duck is a very sausage — duck normally it's called in England, very long body and two very short legs and flappy ears, very cute — but to say that an Alsatian is like a duck is almost a meaningless statement, because apart from the fact that both are dogs, they have absolutely nothing else in common. So the statement to say an Alsatian is like a duck has no meaning.
Again then, we can only rightly use "like" when two things are so similar that the differences are minimal and the similarities are overwhelming. That means to say we can say that one Alsatian is indeed like another Alsatian. They are indeed alike because they are both Alsatians. And two Alsatians may not entirely look alike — one might be a different color and another might have longer ears, another shorter ears or whatever, and some are darker and some are lighter. But even there the similarities are such that we can say that these two Alsatians are alike if their appearance is so close to being identical that we can say they are alike. But if one is dark and one is light, even then we can hardly say they are alike anymore. I'm spending some time to help us when we turn back to this passage in Matthew 22, verse 39, and the Lord says that the second commandment is like the first. I hope now we understand the meaning of "like" much better. It means that these two commandments are so nearly identical that we are not talking about two very disparate things, but two things which are so close in their identity that the one can be said to be like the other.
Let's try to understand the spiritual significance of what we are talking about. How have you understood these commandments as for now? Well, as for now, you have understood it like this: I am to love God with all my heart and soul and strength, and then with much less enthusiasm and with considerable difficulty and with almost no motivation, we are to love the neighbor as ourselves. And hopefully I said "as ourselves" so softly that you didn't bother to hear the thing. But I will love the Lord my God with all my soul and all my strength with such intensity, and the neighbor as myself. I think I am not exaggerating when I'm trying to express our feeling in this matter.
You see, we have many problems in trying to make these two commandments appear alike at all, because they are not in the least alike to the carnal mind. Now we can see the similarity to 1 John 4:20. There is the same spiritual presupposition behind the two things that we cannot follow, because in our eyes, loving God and loving the neighbor are not in the least alike. The Lord should simply have said, "Love God and love the neighbor," but not to say "alike." They are not alike at all, unless the Lord is following a different kind of logic from ours. What is that different logic? And that is what we have to understand if we are going to think in new patterns of thought.
Let's look into this a little more fully. What has God done for us? He gave his only begotten Son. He gave everything that was dear and precious to him. He gave even his only begotten Son. I have motive for loving him. Oh yes, I do. He has changed my life. He has delivered me from the bondage of sin. He has set me free. He has put me on wings as eagles and I have mounted up away from the earth into new realms of spiritual heights. If you ask me to love God with all my heart and soul, I have a motive. Oh yes, Lord, I will love you, I will.
But what has my neighbor ever done for me? What has your neighbor ever done for you? Can you tell me? You have motive to love God — amen and amen. But what motive have you got to love your neighbor? I mean, he is forever stepping on your toes. When you want to go into the bathroom, lo and behold, he is in front of you there. When you want to brush your teeth, he is brushing his teeth there. When you want to comb your hair, this inconsiderate, rude, thoughtless fellow is there in the bathroom. For all intents and purposes, he seems to live there. I mean, this thoughtless nuisance of a fellow is my neighbor. Think on it. Have pity on me that I have a neighbor like this. And of course you have discovered, amazingly, that most of your neighbors are like that, isn't it? They are always in the bathroom when you want to be in the bathroom, and they are always doing the thing that you want to do, and they are always occupying the seat that you want to sit on. They are always in your way.
And to say that loving the neighbor is like loving God — I mean, Lord Jesus, please do me this kindness. I mean, to say that these two are alike — I may not be highly intelligent, but I am not that stupid. I mean, to say that these two things are alike — pardon my expression, but it seems to me like nonsense. Am I expressing your thoughts fairly? Am I exaggerating? Surely you feel this is not true. There is no likeness between these two commandments. They bear not the least resemblance to each other, unless I have missed something in the logic of all this.
There is one respect in which they are alike: they are alike in the intensity of the commandment. And that makes it even more impossible to understand, because the Lord didn't just say, "Love your neighbor." Okay, that would be already asking quite a lot. I mean, this inconsiderate nuisance, I am to love. But to say, "Love him as yourself"? Come on, this is getting more and more unreasonable. Lord, I have every reason to love you, just what you have done for me. But love this fellow? Love? What did he ever do for me? What did he ever do for me? When he cooks me a meal, he burns the stuff for me. When I ask him to get something, he gets me the wrong thing. I ask him to meet me at the — that's the way it is.
So they are alike there: there is the likeness in the intensity of the commandment. Why do I say likeness? Because let me ask you this question: who in this world have you ever loved with all your heart and mind and soul and strength? Who?
# In His Image (Part 4) - The Image of God and Loving the Neighbor
And that one person is a wonderful person. Yourself. Surely that is the only person in this world that you have ever loved with all your concentration. I mean, you spend all your time thinking about how you're going to get a good job, how you're going to get a good education, how you're going to settle your future. Your whole intention and commitment is for yourself. That's how we have always lived. And now the Lord wants to change our entire thought pattern and says, "No, no. Now from now on, all the attention and devotion you have given to yourself is now to be given to God." And you say, okay, that's fair. "And to the neighbor." That's stuck in my throat. No, only to you, Lord. Not this guy. You. Amen, Lord. And the Lord says, "Him too."
But here we run into a very serious problem. You say, Lord, now I got you. You've made a little mistake. Yes, illogical. Impractical. Impossible. Let me explain to you, Lord, why. You should know that nobody can possibly give the same intensity of devotion to two objects. You, Lord Jesus, said yourself, you cannot serve God and mammon. Because if you give your whole attention to mammon, you have no more attention left to God. And if you give your whole attention to God, you have no more attention left to mammon. You cannot love — I can love God one half and love mammon another half. I can maybe try something like that. And most Christians do.
But to come to love God with that intensity and a neighbor with that same intensity is impossible. You can't give 100% to two different directions. So you see, Lord, if you pardon my saying so, you made a little mistake. These two commandments are not alike. They are not even logical. You see, I am quite logical. I have been to school. There's no way you can love God with all your heart and soul and love the neighbor as yourself. And then you are going to love the neighbor with all your heart and soul. Can you do it? You tell me, can you do it? No way. You see, because you are being torn apart. One is vertical, the other is horizontal. How can you be two at the same time? No way. No way. Something is wrong here.
I mean, becoming Christian never meant that we should throw away all logic and behave like fools. I mean, in fact, this is no way to be done. So where is the problem? Did the Lord make a mistake? He failed to understand the realities of human makeup and psychology? Or is there something wrong with our thinking? Well, there's nothing wrong with our thinking. In fact, we are absolutely right, on the understanding that we are thinking carnally, of course. What the spiritual way of thinking is, is what we have not understood. And that is what I want to say.
Have I defined the problem for you clearly enough? Do you see the problem now? Or were these thoughts hidden in your mind and I have simply brought them out to the surface? Can you see that it's not possible? To the carnal mind, he is always saying, "It's impossible. It can't be done." And so, Lord, pardon me. You're going to ask the impossible, and that's it. If you ask me to spend the whole day worshipping and adoring you, concentrating my heart towards you, okay, I can do that. By the Lord's grace, I can. But to do both things at the same time, it's just not possible. I might have to alternate in some way, but it just doesn't work. I mean, any time I give to devoting to the Lord, I cannot be serving my brother. And if I'm serving my brother, I cannot be devoting my time to the Lord. So, Lord, which of these two things do you want me to do? Or some compromise between the two? But you ask me to do both. It's not possible. Right? Right. Wrong. Spiritually wrong. But carnally right.
What do we mean? Let us look at the word "like." Come back to this word again. Man was created in the image of God. Only now, at this point, I will reveal to you that this is the fourth message on the image of God. What is an image? An image is like the real thing. It is like the original. None of this that we have talked about will make any sense until we can change our thinking in thinking about people, to think in a new way. To think of man now in a totally new way, in a new way that we don't even begin to know how to think, but we are going to start. We are going to learn to start seriously to think of man as the image of God. And an image is like the original.
Let us try to go a little bit deeper into this and try to understand what it is the Lord is saying to us here. And we will very quickly realize that in both cases we are dealing with the image of God. And the importance of the doctrine of the image of God in Scripture cannot be underestimated, because it poses for us an entirely new way of thinking about people.
Let me try to illustrate this thing. But first, let me show you from both passages that the image of God is what is behind the thinking. In 1 John 4, verse 20, you will notice within the next verses that John is talking about the image of God. He says, "He that loves the Father will also love the child," only two verses down. Because the child bears the image of the Father, is it not? Otherwise, what is the logic? I don't have to love the child because I love the father. In fact, you love many people but you don't really love their children, do you? At least the carnal man doesn't. But the spiritual mind thinks differently. He loves for a different reason. The child with all its imperfections may be quite unlike the Father, is it not? Quite unlike the Father in every way, except that the child does bear the image of the Father. And John says, if you really love the Father — and the question is whether you really do — you will also love the child. If for no other reason than that the child bears the image of the Father.
Now let's try to understand this teaching of the image of God yet more clearly. In Matthew 22, the Lord Jesus speaks in that very same chapter about image. And this time in another context, Matthew 22, verse 20. And you remember the famous incident when the Lord Jesus asked whether he should pay taxes, whether his disciples would pay taxes or not. And the Lord Jesus asked them to produce a coin. In verse 20, "And Jesus said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?'" Whose image? In fact, that's exactly the same word for the word "image" in the New Testament, here translated "likeness." You see, "like." "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar's." And the Lord said, "Therefore render to Caesar what is his, and to God what is his." The depth of this statement is incredible. Anything stamped with his image belongs to him. Man belongs to God because he is stamped with his image.
We're going to have to learn to think about man in an entirely different way than the carnal man thinks. Because we have never really seriously started to think about man as God's image. Take any coin in your pocket, Canadian coin, whatever, and you'll see there is an image stamped on it. And in the old Roman coins — and I bought one of these when we were in the first team together, we were in Israel — you'll find that coins in those days were quite unlike modern coins, in the sense that every modern coin is produced mechanically and they're almost identical, each coin. But the ancient coins were not round and even. They were rough-edged, and every coin was a little bit different in shape. The only similarity it had was the image stamped on it.
Now what is the significance of image? Let's think a bit more like this. Suppose I take a Canadian coin or a British coin which has the image of the Queen on it. I put it on the floor and I step on it. What have I done? I have insulted the image of the Queen. What if someone takes the coin with the image of the Queen there and spits on it? Did he spit on the Queen? No. He only spat on the image. But you don't have to be a genius to understand that the action has indicated something very serious. You have insulted the Queen. You have stepped on her image. But you say, "I didn't step on the Queen." Right, you didn't. But you did step on the image. And what is intended by this is clear.
Now try to grasp the significance, and you are beginning to think in a new way. If every man is an image of God, and you say to him, "You fool, you idiot, raca" — raca, maybe we don't know the precise meaning of the word, it doesn't matter, the intention is perfectly clear — the Lord says you will be guilty of hellfire. You say, "Surely this is exaggerating. Lord, you're always exaggerating, aren't you?" Oh, he is not exaggerating. Because that sentence has meaning only when you understand that man is in the image of God. You have insulted God by insulting his image, just as you would spit on the image of the Queen or step on her image.
What is the coin? What is the flag? The flag is just a piece of cloth with some colors on it. You try spitting on a flag in front of the people. You try stepping on that flag and you'll be torn apart. I mean, you'll be thrown in jail. You'll say, "Come on, I only stepped on a piece of cloth, and not a very clean piece of cloth at that." You see, man understands the significance of image when it comes to worldly things, right? But he doesn't understand the significance when it comes to spiritual things. That is why if you insult your brother, the Lord said, you are guilty of hellfire. You have insulted his image. But why do we have no problem there before? Because we never thought of man as seriously being in the image of God. And a Christian is doubly in the image of God, both by the old covenant and the new covenant.
The change of thinking, the way we look at people, has to be radically changed. But now we understand what John is saying in 1 John chapter 4, verse 20, when we understand this logical premise. John is saying this: if you do not love the brother whom you can see as being the image of God, how would you love him whom that image represents? Oh, I never thought of it like that. Exactly. That's where our problem is. We never thought of it like that. We thought brother is brother. I mean, he's nothing like God, he's not remotely like him. But God says he is the image. He is the image. Whether we like it or not, he's the image.
That coin may be rather soiled. It may be even a bit rusty. It may be distorted, it may be scratched. But you step on it and you have stepped on the image of the Queen. Soiled or not soiled, rusty or not rusty, scratched or not scratched, it is still the image of the Queen. A flag — it may be dirty, it may be torn, it may have been captured by the enemy, whatever, but any insult against that flag is an insult against the image of that country. Everybody knows it. That's why if you want to insult the United States, you burn the United States flag, because it's the image of the United States. You can do the same thing with a coin, you can do the same thing with a stamp, a postal stamp, anything, because these are images of that country or of the sovereign of that country or the leader of that country.
When we arrived in Florida, I saw there was a picture of President Reagan. What is a photograph? A photograph is nothing but a piece of paper hanging there on the wall. If you try spitting on that photograph, you'll see what happens. I mean, you'll probably be beaten into the ground and carried away by the police, probably carried away in an ambulance. You say, "Come on, be reasonable, I only spat on a piece of paper." Oh no, it's not a piece of paper. It's an image. That's what you spat on, not a piece of paper.
You and I may only be a piece of paper, worth nothing, as far as the world is concerned, worth nothing, worth a few cents. I mean, a one-cent coin is worth one cent. You step on that one-cent coin in front of anyone who belongs to the Commonwealth or to Britain and you'll see what happens to you. And rightly so, because you have insulted what is precious to them, even though that coin is worth only one cent. You and I may be worth only one cent, right? Maybe less than one cent in our eyes, or in other people's eyes. But you are incredibly precious in one sense: you bear his image. And anyone who insults you insults God, because you bear his image. And you may be worth one cent, but woe betide anyone who dares to insult you, call you idiot, fool, raca. Hellfire awaits that person. Is that my teaching? That is what the Lord says there in the Sermon on the Mount, not me. And that logic we could never understand until this day because we have not understood the teaching of image.
Oh, brothers and sisters, we've got to change the way we look. Now, if man is the image of God, it follows that any service I do for the sake of that image, I do for the sake of him who has given that image, of his own grace and of his choice. I may not like my brother or my sister. I may not like that coin. I don't like its color. I don't like its shape. I don't like it that it's dirty. I don't like that it's scratched. But you are going to have to argue with him, not with that coin. That's what you're going to have to argue with.
Now, you see that we previously posited that we were talking about two directions — loving God with all our hearts, loving the brother — and this is impossible, precisely because we thought they were two entirely different directions, but they are not. Now you realize we are talking about the same direction, that any action performed for or against the brother or the sister has been performed for or against God. And that is why the Lord Jesus says, "He that receives you receives me. He that persecutes you persecutes me." You are me. You are my image. You are my representative. And whether the world likes you as my representative or not, whether other brothers and sisters like you as my representative or not, is not the point. I choose to have you as my representative.
Can you grasp this way of thinking? Difficult, isn't it? We have never thought quite like that before. Now we see that the second commandment is like the first commandment precisely because the second is the image of the first. And what you do to the one is what you do to the other. How you react to the one is how you react to the other.
Now, the Lord in his wisdom has done marvelous things. How wise God is. How he catches us in our hypocrisy and in our superficiality. What do I mean? You and I can easily profess, "Oh, I love God so much. I love him, I adore him, I praise him." And he says, "Really? Prove it. Do what you would do for me to the image that I have appointed."
You see, let's say we love him very much. How much? Is your love for him worth a thousand dollars? Maybe ten thousand dollars? But God doesn't need money, does he? How do you give him ten thousand dollars? He doesn't need any ten thousand dollars. He doesn't even need one dollar. He doesn't even need one cent. Hallelujah. What a relief. He doesn't need money. So I love you very much, Lord, but I keep it all. Such a relief.
Now it's getting quite cold outside, but hallelujah. I mean, the Lord doesn't need a fur coat, and so I have a spare fur coat. So good that he never feels cold, so I can leave it there. And the Lord never gets hungry, so I never have to cook him a meal. My neighbor — I mean, I do my best, and he says, "What is this?" He never knows how to appreciate my efforts. I labor day in and day out, and he says, "What is this stuff?" Do you know how many hours I spend to cook this stuff? And he says, "What is this nondescript mash on the table?" There's no sense of appreciation. But God doesn't even need to eat. And so hallelujah, I don't have to waste my time cooking.
Why do I say God is perfectly wise? Because let me tell you, it's very easy to love him. He doesn't need anything. What does he need from you? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And if you have time to spare a few words of praise, and you praise him, do you realize what happens when you praise him? Well, your own spirit is so uplifted. In fact, you got more than he did. You know, he's not very fussy about your voice. I mean, your neighbor might say, "What is this voice? Would you be quiet?" I mean, but God never complains about your voice, does he? No way. He never complains about your voice. You see? And so you can praise him and refresh him. Refresh who? Refresh him? Really, you're refreshing yourself. In fact, as you are worshipping and praising, you are the one who really got most out of it. Isn't it? I'm sure God got something out of it too, but you're the one who got most of it. I see people who spend an hour praising the Lord. They come out, their face beaming. Oh, they had a wonderful time. They really had a wonderful time. Of course, they got everything.
But thanks be to God that he doesn't need all of these things. But you know, the problem is this. Your brother has a way of feeling cold in winter. And he has this nasty habit of feeling hungry when he doesn't get any food to eat. And he has this nasty habit of getting lonely when nobody talks to him. And he's always so sensitive. And he has this need and that need and the other need. He never stops having needs. God is so wonderful. He needs nothing. You don't even have to spend time with him. Of course, if you spend time with him you help yourself.
And the Lord said, "That's right. You prove your love to me by attending to my image." My image — and this brother or sister needs some cleaning. It's going to take a lot of time to polish all those scratches off that image. The coin is quite hard and the brother is quite hard too. But it takes a lot of polishing and really good compounds. But don't polish it so hard that you take the image right off. Just remove the scratches. And the brother needs a lot of time. You have to spend a lot of time with him. "I don't have that much time." But anyway, the time that you need to give to God — how much? He doesn't need your time. But your brother sure needs your time. He ties you up two hours on the telephone. Your ears ache after that. You have tried putting the telephone on the other ear because this one is already red. How much time do these people really need? I mean, counsel these guys, there's no end of it. You give them time and they want more time. And God is so wonderful. He never needs any time.
Do you see what I'm getting at? Do you see what God's wisdom is? Precisely because he doesn't have a need, it's easy to love him. It's precisely because your brother needs everything that it is so difficult to love him. And God has said, "You think these two commandments are different? No, no. I tell you something. These two commandments are identical. If you fail to do the second, you have failed to do the first."
The carnal man easily slips into hypocrisy, foolishness. He locks himself away in a monastery, spends all day singing praises and chanting hymns, and he thinks he's become so holy. And the Lord said, "Will you kindly get out of yourself and brush your brother's shoes? Will you kindly get out of yourself and go and cook him a meal because he's hungry?" You can't stay around with God because in his wisdom he has made these two things identical — people. And that is why at the judgment in Matthew 25 it said, "Insofar as you did not do this to the least of my brethren, you didn't do it to me. You didn't visit me when I was in jail. You didn't clothe me when I was cold. You didn't feed me when I was hungry." And they said, "When? When were you hungry?" "Look at my image there, all around you. That's when I was hungry. That's when I was cold."
Oh, brothers and sisters, it's hard, isn't it, for us to think in a new way? Can you really look at your brother and your sister with all his faults, with all the scratching, with all the grime upon it, and still discern — still with spiritual eyes, because the carnal eye cannot discern it? No way the carnal eye can discern it. No way the unregenerate man can ever see the image of God in another man. There's no way it can be done. But the spiritual man, with new thinking, a new mind, looks at every person and discerns there the image of God. How that affects our relationship to one another — how it affects the husband's relationship to a wife, a wife's relationship to a husband, sisters to brothers, children to parents, parents to children. It's amazing. It will absolutely revolutionize your thinking if you can only think on these premises, this new kind of logic that is taught in the Scripture.
One thing more. It takes away, in this amazing teaching of the image of God, it takes away all glory from man. You could never idolize a man for his own sake, because he is nothing more and nothing less than the image of God. You could never idolize me if you understand the image of God, because I am nothing less, nothing more than the image of God. I am nothing in myself. You are nothing in yourself. The teaching of the image of God makes every person nothing more or less than a mirror, that when you bow towards the mirror, you are bowing towards the reflection pointing upward — the image of God. You don't worship the image, of course. Why worship that mirror that is pointing you to God?
It removes every possibility of pride or arrogance, exactly as Paul said. What have you got, Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that you didn't receive? You could never idolize a person. You could never even feel pride in yourself when you realize that you are what you are simply by the grace of God. This amazing teaching of the Word of God cuts away the very foundations of pride, so that every action is directed to God.
This fulfills exactly what Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 16: "Henceforth," he says, "we know no man according to the flesh." No man according to the flesh. But how can you think in this way of knowing no man according to the flesh? Only in one way: when with spiritual eyes you discern that every man is simply the image of God. And when you do something for him, you are doing it for God. Therefore, it's not a separate direction. You are expressing your devotion to God through his image. The only image of God ever appointed in this world — this man, is you and me. And he chose it that way in his superb, incredible wisdom.
When you are cooking a meal, you are not wasting time. You are serving God by serving his image. You don't look at a man for what he is in himself. You look at a man not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. As Paul says, "Henceforth, we know no man." We don't even think of Jesus physically, but only as the image of God, the perfect image of God. In the meantime, we can also serve God through the imperfect images. Learn to think new ways — the renewal of the mind. That is the way, and the only way, we become new people.
Let us worship God in prayer. We close. Thank you.