Our Lord’s teaching can be summed up in this: the relationship that He demands for us is an impossible one unless He has done a super-natural work in us. Jesus Christ demands that His disciple does not allow even the slightest trace of resentment in his heart when faced with tyranny and injustice. No amount of enthusiasm will ever stand up to the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His servant. Only one thing will bear the strain, and that is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ Himself— a relationship that has been examined, purified, and tested until only one purpose remains and I can truly say, "I am here for God to send me where He will." Everything else may become blurred, but this relationship with Jesus Christ must never be.
The Sermon on the Mount is not some unattainable goal; it is a statement of what will happen in me when Jesus Christ has changed my nature by putting His own nature in me. Jesus Christ is the only One who can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount.
If we are to be disciples of Jesus, we must be made disciples supernaturally. And as long as we consciously maintain the determined purpose to be His disciples, we can be sure that we are not disciples. Jesus says, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you. . ." ( John 15:16 ). That is the way the grace of God begins. It is a constraint we can never escape; we can disobey it, but we can never start it or produce it ourselves. We are drawn to God by a work of His supernatural grace, and we can never trace back to find where the work began. Our Lord’s making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity of ours at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are naturally easy for us— He only asks us to do the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come.
There once was a boyRightttt Justin. Something you have done perhaps?
With a nose for picking toys
That fills his life with laughter.
He went to his sacred store
Where he found his favorite toy.
A big yellow roadster,
Full of pride, flashy bluster.
He hurriedly went in
To take it for a spin,
Not caring for the ropes and pins
That held it securedly in
Its own little box.
Round the block he goes,
The aisles all he knows.
'Til a man caught him by the collar
And brought him back to his mother.
She asks him where he's being
And tells him what trouble he's in,
Opening the box of a toy car
Not paying for it but playing
And making a mess of things!
From the sole of the foot even unto the head,This is the life of the unredeemed. This is what the world has to offer. This is the price of sin. I believe that the wages of sin is worse than death. Yet why do I sin, why do I continue to turn away, and slide back into the world? I condemn the world, hate its Godlessness, yet I myself is no different, no better. Who am I to say such things? I cannot judge for I myself is to be judged. I fall and fall; there seems to be no end in my self-condemnation.
there is no soundness in it,
but wounds and bruises and putrefrying sores;
they have not been closed or bound up,
or soothed with ointment.
Come now, and let us reason together,
says the Lord,
Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.
(Is. 1: 18)
