I was looking for the Lord to know what the Lord would have me to share with you today. And somehow the Lord kept bringing this passage back to my mind. And every time I thought, even last night, I thought, maybe I'll preach something else. This message is too difficult to preach. But the Lord wouldn't let me turn aside, so I have to come to this word. I just want to deal with this passage which the Lord lays on my heart, which summarizes for us the essence of the Christian life. What is the nature of the Christian life?
Now the Lord gave us a teaching both in the Old and New Testaments. And the importance of this passage is that it covers both Testaments, both the Old and the New. And this passage is very familiar to us in its wording, so we need hardly even look at it, because I'm sure you know it by heart already. As you recall, for example, in Mark chapter 12, verses 31 onwards, 31 to 34, where a certain scribe or Bible scholar, you can say, asks the Lord Jesus, what is the greatest of the commandments? And the Lord Jesus said, the greatest commandment is this: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength." And the second is like unto it. And that is, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Now, we must not suppose that these commandments simply belong to the Old Testament, because they occur eight times in the New Testament. And the Apostle Paul quotes it several times. That is how important it is. There are a number of things that we need to notice. First is, what is the relationship between these two commandments? We love God with our total being. Is that enough? No. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The second is so completely related to the first, and I have no time to expound this in detail today, is that you do not fulfill the first without fulfilling the second. That is, there is no way to love God in total love, unless we love the neighbor as ourself.
And so complete is the identification of the two -- the second like unto the first -- complete identification of the two, that if you fulfill the second, you fulfill the first automatically. Remarkable, isn't it? The Lord says the same thing in Matthew 5, where He says, he that loves his neighbor, that is the essence of all the prophets and of the law. And then the Apostle Paul quotes this himself. In Romans 13 verse 9, for example, he says, "Love is the fulfillment of the law. He that loves his neighbor has fulfilled the whole law." Then you say, what about the first commandment? Oh yes. By doing the second, you have fulfilled the first. That is the amazing thing. He says the same thing in Galatians chapter 5 verse 14. The book that is concerned with grace. Galatians is salvation by grace alone. It is in this very book that he says that he who loves his neighbor as himself, that person has fulfilled all that God requires of him through grace. In fact, there is no way to fulfill this as we shall see, except by grace through faith.
Now, the great problem that has exercised my mind for a long time is, what does it mean to love the neighbor as oneself? What exactly does that mean? And I look through commentaries to see what they have to say, and I must say they have not illuminated my mind at all, which means that they don't understand what that means either. To love your neighbor like yourself. What does "like" mean? And I got a book by a philosopher, a famous philosopher called Paul Ricoeur, which has "oneself as another." Well, you try reading that book and you are totally befuddled at the end of it. You don't even know what he's talking about. He's so philosophical that I thought that I had studied philosophy, and then I looked at this, and I had a hard time figuring out what he was trying to say.
Now, surely God does not intend us to read through 300 pages of philosophy to figure out what loving the neighbor means. And if we had depended on that, we would have a hard time ever fulfilling what the Lord has called us to do. And then one day as I sat there and pondered this, in a flash, the Spirit of the Lord enabled me to see what it means. And this is what I would like to share with you. Because on the one hand, it is a tremendous challenge. On the other hand, we realize that without God's enabling, it's not possible for us to live this kind of life.
In fact, the New Testament teaching, as Paul shows us in these quotations from the New Testament where he quotes the Old Testament -- as you know, this passage actually is first mentioned in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18. But it is central, central to the New Testament teaching. As you saw from our songs, this is how people will know that we are Christians, by our love. And the Lord Jesus said, "Hereby shall all men know that you are my disciples, because you love one another." The church has miserably failed. We have miserably failed in doing this very thing. And if we fail in this, we fail being Christians at all. So it is essential for us to understand.
Now as I said, it came to me in a flash as I tried to ponder this. First, I want to emphasize again the point that I made earlier. I am sure that if you are a serious Christian, you have often thought, how do I love God with my whole heart, with all my mind, with my soul, with my strength? How can it be possible? How is this in practice fulfilled? Do I sit there saying to the Lord, "I love you with all my heart, and all my soul, my strength"? Do you keep saying this to Him? Well, we can say that. But is that what it means to fulfill it, just by repeating, "I make my commitment to You, I love You with my being"?
That's why the Lord said, "The second is like to." The second is equal to. The second explains the first. What is the second? Love your neighbor as yourself. Now that means, what does that mean now? We've solved one problem, only to end up with another problem. If we are serious, we know we must fulfill this. How do I love my neighbor as myself? What exactly does this mean?
And then it suddenly dawned on me. Barriers. Barriers. What do you mean by barriers? Well, the fact is that the whole nature of life, as we live it in the world today, under the power of sin, is that we are separated from our neighbors. We are cut off from our neighbors. There is an obstacle between us. We talk to each other through a veil. We talk to each other through closed doors, you can say.
You know, most of us have doors with a chain on it. You know the front door? Somebody knocks on the door, you don't just open the door. I mean, some vicious guy comes rushing in, you won't have that. So you've got the chain on. So you open the door, and the chain bars there, and you look out and say, "Yes, what can I do for you?" And the man says, "Can I sell you this?" You say, "No, no, no, I have no time for this," and you slam the door. So this chain protects you. And we seem to relate to each other in this way. We talk to each other through the chain. The chain protects us. And we make sure that that person will not harm us, or take advantage of us in any way. This is the reality of life as we live it in the world, isn't it?
And I find that, isn't that still true in the church? We try, we try, but we still talk to each other through a veil. I talk to you, and you talk to me, and you're not sure whether the person you're talking to -- are you really seeing me? You see one eye through the door, no? Yes. The chain is on, and you look through. You wonder, how does the person look, if I could see his whole face, or her whole face, and I could see only one eye coming through it. I'm not sure I've really seen the person.
Now imagine a church in which we all relate to each other through barriers, through doors, through fences. We dare not open our hearts to the other completely. Maybe we have something to hide. I mean, maybe the chain is in case the person comes in and sees, oh, the house is so untidy, the dishes have not been washed, the floor has not been vacuumed for the last five weeks. And so, we have to keep people out. We have to prevent them from seeing us as we really are. This is the point. We have doors. We have screens. We talk to each other through barriers.
And the point of this, my beloved brothers and sisters, is that if you live in this way, you are not living the gospel. You're not living the gospel. If I am afraid to open myself to you because I am afraid you might take advantage of me, that means to say, I don't treat you as myself. I don't expect myself to take advantage of myself. And even if it does, I don't mind. If I treat you as myself, then there is no more barrier between us. That is what it means. You are me. That means there is no barrier between us. You cannot still be me if I put a barrier between you.
There are some people with mental illnesses, we call schizophrenic sometimes, in which they put even a barrier in their own minds. They don't know themselves. They can't communicate with themselves. That is supposed to be some kind of definition of schizophrenia. That is a serious illness. If we cannot even relate to ourselves, we have a barrier in ourselves, we become a split personality. That is a terrible situation to be in. Now, not many of us have this kind of problem. But we do have another problem. We cannot relate to others. That is why relationships break down.
Try to imagine -- for us we can only imagine -- a church in which there are no barriers between us. There are no defensive moves between us. I don't have to play chess with you. You see, how many of us have learned martial arts? What for? If we don't have a door, we have martial arts to protect us. "You give me any trouble, I'll show you my color. I'll show you which color belt I have in karate or judo or whatever." We live defensively. In England, we are told to drive a car defensively. Drive defensively. Because you have some nut who is going to come charging down the road and crash into you. Now, you may not be wrong, but somebody else is going to. So you drive defensively. All life is defensive. That's why we have to live with doors and chains and fences. And doors lock people out, but they also lock you in. Did you realize that? You become a prisoner in your own house. And so many people are prisoners because of that defensive posture. And within that prison, you feel very, very lonely. I was reading about this billionaire who had to be so protected that in the end, he became the prisoner of his own bodyguards. It's tragic. Very tragic. What's the use of being a billionaire and you become a prisoner? Doors -- those are the problems. We have them all around us.
I was once in Switzerland and again, thanks to the kindness of co-workers, encouraged me, go up in the mountains and have a rest. You know, up in the Swiss mountains and the Alps, have a rest. I went to school in Switzerland once, so I'm quite familiar with Switzerland. In my teenage days, when my father was at the United Nations in Geneva, then I was living in Switzerland for a time, so I know the country very well and I know where the nice places are to go. And they encouraged me, go up there into the mountains. I said, okay, I'll go up there into Wengen and we'll have a nice few days rest there.
And then, of course, when you go up there, what you can do is you can take the cable car and go higher up into the mountains. There you have the fantastic view and you can walk around, breathe the fresh air, and that air does wonders for me. It revives me in days. I feel so much better, so much more vigorous. When I first arrived, I was slogging along and then after a few days, I started jogging a bit, and after a few days, I was actually sprinting. That's a few years ago now, of course. Sprinting uphill. So that air did wonderful things.
And one day, I took the cable car up the hill, up the mountain I should say, and there took a walk up there in the fresh air. And then I was intending to go down in the last cable car back to the town below where I was staying. So with ten minutes to go before the last cable car, I went to the washroom, you see. And went in there. It's a very big public washroom which is about three or four minutes' walk away from the cable car place. And as I was in there, because of the size of it, in fact, I heard some sound and then suddenly I thought the lights were dimmed. And then when I was wanting to leave, I discovered that I had been locked in. The caretaker, apparently, just taking a casual glance at the washroom, didn't make sure whether there was anybody still inside or not. And so I found myself firmly locked in this washroom on the mountaintop, several thousand feet up, can you imagine?
And this whole thing, of course, is made of tiles and stone, and you can see how cold it would be at night, because in the mountains, in the daytime it may be very hot and at night the temperature just drops. And I would be a piece of frozen meat by the morning. So I noticed it was a metal door, a very solid metal door. The Swiss make everything very solid, you know. There's nothing flimsy about them. Stone walls, metal doors. And the windows are high up there, there's no chance of climbing out of there. So I found myself nicely locked into the washroom, and I looked at my watch. I had six or seven minutes to go, and if I didn't get down on that cable car, I had very light clothing on me, I'd be frozen up in the mountain, and the place would be deserted, everybody had gone down already.
So again, I thought, you see, this is the thing -- locked. We are like people locked in within us. Other people lock us in or we lock ourselves in. This is all of life. All has to do with locking in and locking out, this kind of thing. So of course, you think, well, then what happened in the end? I had to think fast. I thought, wow, what am I going to do? I'm going to be frozen in here overnight, and the metal door, there's no way you're going to punch your way through that or kick your way through it. So I had to look to the Lord and say, "Lord, what am I going to do now?"
So I took a good look at the door and again, it's wonderful how the Lord gives wisdom in things. I took a look at the hinges of the metal door. And I said, okay, I'm going to knock the hinges out. I got two minutes to do it. So I took a key out of my pocket, the apartment key that we had rented, and I tried knocking the pin out. And indeed, I managed to knock the one pin out and tried the lower one and managed to knock the lower pin out as well. And so, with both pins knocked out, I was able to lift the door off the hinge and so managed to get to the cable car just before it left. So you can see the feeling. Have you ever had the feeling of being locked in? It's a bad feeling.
It's also a bad feeling to be locked out when you want to get in. I had that kind of experience too. There was a time when my father and I, we used to have battles of wits, you know. Father and son often have great time in battle of the wits, and he would say to me, "You've got to be home by 11 o'clock at night." And I had this good friend of mine and we just love to talk and talk and talk, you know how it is. Bosom friends, you really can open your heart to each other, no barrier between us, you can talk deeply and freely. And of course, whoever remembers 11 o'clock at night. I get home and my dad has locked the door securely so that even with a key I couldn't get in. He wanted to teach me the lesson: you get home by 11 or you stay out all night, you see. So there have been many battles of wits in which I figured out ways to make him open the door eventually.
But one day I ran out of tricks to get him to open the door. And I thought, well, this time I think he's wise to all my tricks. So I said to my friend, "Now how am I going to get back home?" So I thought about it and I said, "Okay, there's only one way left: I'm going to have to climb in through the bathroom window on the third floor." And this was a risky business because there's quite a drop down on three floors, and in these older style buildings the ceiling is very high from the floor, so three floors is quite high. And I had to climb over a wall -- of course, the design, those who built the house had already thought about the security aspect -- so I had to climb over the stairs going up, the back stairs of the house, and then I had to climb over a wall and try to get in through the window which had one of these metal bars on it that adjusts the size of the opening of the window. So once you get over the wall, you still have to fish open that bar so that you can open the window wide enough to get in. So that was quite a risky venture. And my friend then took off his belt and he put his belt around my belt so that if I slipped he would hang on to the belt. It was a whole risky business. And so eventually I climbed over the wall, into the bathroom window, tiptoed to my bed and went to sleep so that my father in the morning thought, "How did he get in?" I put everything back, the bathroom window was closed, back in the same position where that thing was adjusted, and the front door was of course completely locked. So he must have looked in the morning, "Where did he come from? How did he get in?" After that, he decided never to lock the door again, nor to insist that I come back at 11, I think. So it was a very interesting relationship, but there was a barrier between my father and myself.
And isn't that so true between parents and children? So hard to communicate. So that this locking me out and locking me in business is simply an external expression of the same problem of the internal relationship, the relationship that is complicated by barriers. Now isn't that so true also within the church? Can we really put away these barriers? But barriers are important, we saw. They protect us. We feel secure behind these barriers. We don't feel secure without any protection, without barriers between us.
And so, what is the nature of the command? "Love your neighbor as yourself" is a command to remove all the barriers. That leaves us very vulnerable. That makes us a bit scared. I don't mind opening the door wide enough to talk to you, but I don't like opening the door so wide that you're going to take advantage of me. Right? That is the way we relate to people. And that also is the reason why eventually relationships break down. We can't get past this barrier mentality.
But the command here is this: "Your neighbor as yourself" means the neighbor is your alter ego, that is, your other self. He is as yourself means he is another self of yours. You treat him as though he were yourself. Wow, we don't know how to love anybody like that. That kind of love is too much for us. It is too dangerous for us. We are too scared to love people like this. We are scared even to love ourselves too much sometimes, never mind love somebody else.
Now, what does it mean? When you are hungry, what happens? Well, you go and get something to eat. If he is hungry, that's his problem. No. "As your next self" means if you are hungry, you feed yourself. If he is yourself, then if he is hungry, you feed him. You say, "I've got a problem enough feeding myself, I've got to feed him too." There is the command. When you are thirsty, what do you do? You help yourself to a drink, of course, and hopefully a nice drink. When he is thirsty, what happens? You help him to a drink. You say, "Well, what about him helping me to a drink?" Well, that part isn't in the command. You see, there is the problem. You've got to love him without necessarily him loving you back. You see how difficult this command is?
Now you can see that unless you love God with all your heart, you're not going to bother to love him. I don't want to give him my drink, or I want to give him a drink. I'm going to have two drinks. Now John the Baptist taught the same thing: "He that has two cloaks, let him give one to the one who doesn't have." Hey, you say, you know how much a cloak costs. Yeah, he knows how much it costs. But you got two, you give him one. Christian life is very difficult. It immediately attacks the self, the old self. The other person becomes another self that you have to care for. And how many selves do you have around you? This one is your neighbor, that one is your neighbor. You say, "I got problems just looking after myself with my drinks. How many drinks do I have to take care of around me?" I told you, the Christian life is very difficult. There is the practical side. Who said that Christianity has to do with sitting in the clouds? Who said that Christianity is just gazing upward and forgetting about responsibilities on earth?
The truth of the matter is that the true Christian lives in a way that is revolutionary, that treats another person as though that person is yourself. If you are hurt, what do you do? You nurse your wound. If he is hurt, because he is yourself, you nurse his wound. And so it goes on and on from one such example to another. Whatever you would do for yourself, you would do for him. Can you cope with this kind of Christianity? This is the end of self. In the loving of another self, you actually bring your old self to an end. The crucifixion of the self. That is the power of this teaching. And what is surprising to me is that the commentaries don't know how to understand the passage, which, as you come to think of it, is perfectly clear. Maybe we don't want to understand.
# Removing the Barriers (Part 2)
I want to understand the passage. That's the truth of the matter. It is too difficult to handle. But imagine for a moment if we did live like this, what would happen? Well, that would be revolutionary. If I can talk to you with no barrier in between, I'm not afraid of you to hurt me. I have taken up my cross. Go ahead and crucify me. If in crucifying me it means your salvation, go ahead and do it. That is the mentality behind turning the other cheek, which we also can't handle. That is the mentality. If by striking me it somehow releases the problem in your life, it leads to your salvation, go ahead. I don't mind you. Go ahead. "They are taking advantage of you." Indeed. If in taking advantage of me, you are going to be saved in the process, you go ahead. That is taking up the cross. That is what it really means.
Amazing. This kind of life is frightening. It means I am with no more protection. Big people are going to come and you are going to slap me left and right and say, you know, it helps me to get myself saved. What am I going to be? I am going to be a pin cushion. I am going to be there for target practice. All right. You dare? Dare to live the Christian life? Say, go ahead. Use me for target practice. See how long you can deal with it. Which is going to overcome the problem? I can tell you, nobody can use you for target practice for very long until he has run out of ammunition. He said, "I can't do it anymore. I can't do this." And he is changed by the power of God.
This is the sacrificial life of the Christian. This is Christianity in its raw reality, in the depth of its power, in the character of its revolutionary nature. This is Christianity at its most powerful. But we live some wishy-washy Christianity. We have toned it all down. We keep all our fences there. We keep our walls. And what happens? What happens is that when we do not fulfill this, we also don't experience God. How many Christians do you know experience God on a regular basis? Very few. How many can testify, "I experience God today in this and that way"? Very few. Sometimes I feel very uncomfortable. I seem to be always testifying to what the Lord does in my life and I'm waiting to hear somebody else saying something. Nobody seems to have too much to say.
I'm determined to live according to the word or I stop being a Christian. Either I live the way God teaches or I might as well pack my bags and say, "I'm no Christian at all." I can't live this life. I don't intend to live this life. Forget it. Let us at least do God one service: that we don't use His name, calling ourselves Christians, and then don't live according to His words. "Why do you call me Lord, Lord," the Lord Jesus said, "and do not do the things that I say?" Well, what did He say? "The neighbor is yourself." And the scribe said, "Who is my neighbor?" He said, "Here is the neighbor." The person down there, the Samaritan was the neighbor to the injured man. But we find excuses, like in the parable of the Good Samaritan. We find excuses for not being a good neighbor. We say, we have this commitment already, we have that commitment. We are religious. We have to preserve our sanctity. We have to preserve our cleanliness, and so on and on.
You see, we have a kind of Christianity that as a result of locking out the neighbor from our hearts, you know what happens? You lock God out of your heart. The surprising thing we read in Revelation 3, verse 20 is this. The Lord Jesus says to the church, the Laodicean church: "Behold, I stand at your door, the door of the church, and knock." The church had locked Jesus out, the Laodicean church. What has happened here? Jesus is now outside the door. You see, barriers. And how do you open that door? He said, "If any man open that door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me. We will have fellowship together." Wonderful fellowship. You've got to open that door first.
But how? What is the opening of the door? And how did He get locked out in the first place? The Laodicean church is famous for one thing: its wishy-washiness, its lukewarmness. Like most churches, like most of us today, all wishy-washy. We go some distance, but not too far. We're always told, "Be a Christian, but don't be too radical. Be a Christian, but don't be too extreme." Okay, so we are neither hot nor cold. We are very moderate Christians. The result is, we are Laodicean Christians. Moderate means, I open my door, but not too wide. I got my chain on. I'll be nice to you if you are nice to me. We work on a very, very polite basis at arm's length.
Confucius said the relationship between the superior man is as plain as water. This means, you behave moderately, I behave moderately, all within the provisions of proper rituals and rites. I open my door a little bit, you open your door a little bit, and we can talk a little bit. And then, five minutes time up, we close our doors. Lukewarm Christianity. That's the Christianity we have today. Is your heart wide open?
The Corinthian church found that their hearts were barely closed. And we find the Apostle Paul speaking to them. And you can read that passage sometimes, a very touching passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 1 to 3, where he says to the Corinthians, "Our hearts are wide open to you, Corinthians. Please open your hearts to us." What is this? The Corinthian church owed its very existence to Paul, but their hearts were closed to him, or at least not very open. But he says, "Our hearts are wide open to you." Is your heart wide open? Or is the door closed? That is how God is excluded from your life.
You see, to open your heart to God requires that you open your heart to your neighbor. We have to open our hearts to one another. That is why, as I said right at the beginning, the first principle is that total love for God is defined in terms of total love for neighbor. So I have given you a secret, if you like, but a costly secret. You want to find Jesus coming into your life, and you open the door wide for Jesus to come in, then you have to open your door wide to your brother and sister. There's no other way. There's no other easy way. If I keep the door of my heart closed to you, I can't expect Jesus to be able to come in because that door is closed. If it's closed to you, it's closed also to the Lord. That's what the Lord Jesus said: "He that receives you receives me, and he who rejects you rejects me." You see that in Matthew 10 verse 40, Luke 10 verse 16. There is no way to separate this. "I accept Jesus, but not you. I will let Jesus into my heart, but not you. Jesus is safe to have in my heart. I let Him come in, but I don't trust you. You come into my life, you're going to mess up my life for me. So you stay out of my life. Jesus, please come. You stay out." And Jesus says, "No way. You don't accept him, you don't accept me. You close the door to him, you close the door to me." You can't have the Lord Jesus without having the brother or the sister.
I hope the Vancouver church will be a church in which every heart is truly open to the other. And it's risky. I admit it's risky. That's why I began with the story, which is my experience recently, just two months ago, how we live always under the Lord's protection. Without His protection, we dare not live the Christian life. I risk having my life messed up by opening my heart to any brother and sister, not to mention to all brothers and sisters. But I live under one promise. That is where faith comes in. Because you can't love the brother and sister without faith and without grace. We live always under this promise, which is Zechariah chapter 2, verse 5. What does it say in Zechariah 2:5? "I shall be to you as a wall of fire right about you and the glory in the midst of you."
Okay. That's good enough for me. I'll open my heart wide to you. You can take advantage of me if it helps you. Go ahead. If there's anything I have that you can benefit from, you can have it. You have my word for it. Anything you like. You like this tie? After the service, you can have it. Just let me finish the message first. Anything on me you like, have it. That is the word. Because if it's mine, it's yours. If my neighbor is as myself, then clearly what is mine is his, right? What else can it mean?
This is where the early church put it into practice in the form of the community of goods in Acts chapter 2. That's how it comes from. The community of goods didn't suddenly come out of thin air. It came out of the practicing of this very teaching. That if what is mine is yours, because my neighbor is as myself, that means what is mine is yours. Help yourself. Take it. You can have it. Daring? Crazy? Yes. It's crazy. It's daring. But that's the Christian life. It is radical in the extreme. It is revolutionary in the extreme. There is nothing that communism ever taught that even touches this. It doesn't even come close to this. Communism has nothing to scare us with. And of course, it has also collapsed in the meantime. That kind of teaching doesn't go very far. This is revolutionary stuff. But in this, you experience God.
"I shall be your protection. I shall be a wall of fire around about you." You don't need to protect yourself. He will take care of the protection. Anyone who wants to trample on you will have to reckon with the living God. Your safety is in Him. You don't have to protect yourself. But do you have enough faith to trust that when you throw the door of your heart wide open, He will watch over you? That takes faith. And you're going to experience the reality of His power as indeed I have. Nothing to fear.
And what is more, not only will He be the wall of fire around you so you don't have to build your own wall, He will be the glory in the midst of you. Anyone coming into your life is going to run into His glory. By the time he has slapped you a couple of times, he'll soon discover the glory is too much for him to handle. The next thing he will soon find is that he is on his knees repenting before the Lord. There you will experience the greatness of God.
Well, my time is gone and I have to close here. Just want to pray that the Lord will help you to see the true nature of the Christian life in the light of His word. The challenge of the Christian life. The revolutionary character of this life I have said more than once. It is exciting. It is scary. But our God is real. And I tell you, if anyone doesn't believe in God as the reality of life, he would not even try this kind of crazy teaching. It depends on the reality of God to be able to work and also on His grace to be able to love.
So I can tell you what I do. My goal every day is this: "Lord, today I open my heart to all the brothers and sisters," that they will be in our hearts as the Apostle Paul himself said. He says this: he says that you are in our hearts to live together and to die together. "You are in our hearts," he says to the Corinthians. This is truly superb. Can we say that? Every day we can say, "You are in my heart to live together and die together." Now that is the Christian life in its beauty and its power.
Let us close in prayer.