MAN’S DUTY TO MAN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 31, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 13.

MAN’S DUTY TO MAN.

In Luke 10:27 is recorded an eternal truth: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.”

These are the words of one versed in the law. He came to our Lord with this question, asked ever since man began to die, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Christ’s reply was a question implying this thought: You are versed in the Word of God; God has therein given directions. “What is written in the law? how readest thou?” And the lawyer replied by stating the eternal principles of life, supreme love to God and equal love to our neighbor, quoting the former from Deut. 6:5, and the latter from Lev. 19:18.

Our Lord came not to present new principles or to reveal new laws. He replied: “Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live.” We may take the words, therefore, as the conditions of salvation, as expressed by the Master Himself. (See Matt. 22:37–40.)

These words must be true of all those who live forever. They express the only stamp of character which will endure forever; and such character is the most precious thing in God’s sight. God is love; it is the stamp of His character; and, just as God endures forever and is from everlasting to everlasting, so every one who is stamped with God’s character will endure forever.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.” Our affections, our spiritual powers, our very life, the physical man, our mental faculties, are pre-eminently to be yielded to God. Love to God takes in the whole man. There is to be no reserve.

“Thou shalt love.” Love is not an abstract principle. It is a principle which always issues in doing. If it remains quiescent, it dies. Love must do. God loves man; he tells us so over and over again; but it is not in the words alone; God does for man, and thereby He demonstrates His love. If man is to love God, he must do for God. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” That is the proof of our love to God. “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” Our love is shown in obedience to God. Love to God must be undivided love. We can not love God somewhat, and love something else somewhat also. He demands everything.

Why Should We Love God in That Way?

1. He is our Creator. All we have comes from Him; and because God is our Creator, and has given us this very existence which we enjoy, we ought to love Him for that reason if for nothing else.

2. He is our Redeemer. When man—and we are man—sold himself in sin, and forfeited even life itself by choosing sin and death rather than righteousness and life, God made an eternal sacrifice for man, that He might win him to eternal life. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ was not simply for the few years that He dwelt upon the earth, ending with His crucifixion—it was an eternal sacrifice.

He who was the very image of the invisible God, who was in glory with the Father before the world was, came down to this earth and took upon Himself the form of the creature man. He will never be what He was before. In form He will always be one with humanity throughout the endless ages of eternity. He became God and man, Immanu-El, “God-with-us,” always to remain God-with-us. He stepped clear down to lowest humanity in order that he might lift humanity up to God; and throughout eternity there will be those marks of humanity upon Him, showing God’s wonderful love in the eternal sacrifice that was made for mankind. Surely, then, we ought to love God with all our heart, might, mind, and strength, when He redeemed us by such an infinite sacrifice as that. And that same wonderful love has kept us all the way.

How Can We Love?

You may say that it is impossible for you to love God in this way; that you love other things, sin, and your own self. But you can love God. Every command that God has given in His holy Word is an enabling act to help us to do, to enable us to do, what He has commanded us to do; and every heart that will by faith yield itself up to do what God sets before it to do, is enabled to do it. But how can love come into our heart?—By giving up our heart to God, and letting His Holy Spirit, His mighty presence, come in and take possession of our heart, and then “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” Rom. 5:5.

You say, “I have not His Spirit.” All you have to do is to ask for it. God has it for you. He holds out the water of life and says, “Come ye to the waters, I will give you drink!” That is the water of life, the Spirit of life, flowing right out of the great Fountain of life through all God’s universe. He asks those to whom it comes to yield themselves to “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” and they will receive it. Ask for it. “I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; . . . for every one that asketh receiveth. . . . If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? . . . If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” “The love of God is shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto you.” Then you can love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. Then you can do the next thing which is demanded—

“Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself.”

The Golden Rule is the interpretation of the last clause of my text to-day: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” This is the carrying out of the principle, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” What would you want if you were in like circumstances to the men that are seeking aid in your great cities night after night? Whatever you would feel that you would like your neighbor to do for you, that is what you should do for him.

But you ask, “Who is my neighbor?” The Lord answers that in the immediate context—in an indirect way, yet the most forcible way by which it can be answered—by telling us to whom we are neighbors. He relates the parable of the good Samaritan which tells the lawyer to whom he is neighbor; and that tells us also. Read that parable in Luke 10:30–37, of the man who had fallen among thieves, naked, wounded, half dead. The priest said, I have more important work. And he passed by on the other side. The Levite looked upon him and concluded, He is not worthy of charity, and he passed by on the other side. But the Samaritan, one who was despised by the Jews, came along, looked upon the fallen and friendless man, who was probably a Jew, and bound up his wounds, placed him upon his own beast, carried him to an inn, told the keeper to take care of him until he came again, and whatever was necessary he would pay it. Then the Saviour asks the question, Who was neighbor to him that fell among thieves? It was the Samaritan; but who was the Samaritan’s neighbor?—The man in need. Every one on this earth who is in need is our neighbor; and it is these that we should love as ourselves, do unto them as we would have them do unto us. What a forcible lesson the Lord teaches us in this parable!

Why Should We Love Our Neighbor?

For just the same reason as that for which we are to love God. First of all, that neighbor is our brother by creation. “Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?” God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,” whether American, English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Zulu, Spanish—they are all precious in His sight. God looks upon them from the great standpoint of infinite knowledge and wisdom; and there is very little difference between the high and mighty of earth and those who are the very lowest. We measure it in our finite minds, and there seems such a vast difference, but how small the very best of mankind are when compared with the angels of God!

“As the child to the child of four Is the sage to the fool, And the best of our lore Is the lore of the babe that begins to grow.”

The very greatest of earth are truly in the sight of God

“On the lowest benches of Truth’s great college To guess at what grown-up angels know.”

God looks upon us differently from what man does. He knows that by His own creative power He can take the very lowest and lift them up to the perfection of His own character. We have all one Father; and our hearts ought to go out to our brethren in need in every nation, and land, and country, and clime.

2. We have one Redeemer. When Jesus Christ made that eternal sacrifice, He gave it for all. He did not ask whether the man was a Chinese, or whether he was an Englishman; whether he was white or black, or of what nationality he was; but what was his need. He looked upon this great earth in need, and He

gave all, that He might ransom them and bring them home, and remake poor, fallen man to the praise of the glory of His grace. O, what a wonderful thing God can do for man, if only man will let Him! He bought each one just the same as He bought us, and it is for that very reason that the apostle Paul tells us in Rom. 1:14, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” Paul owed all men—the nations that he never saw—the purchase of his life through Jesus Christ. Christ purchased Paul. Paul accepted of that wonderful love. He found himself a redeemed child of God. He became connected in partnership with our Lord Jesus Christ; and because of that he owed himself to all the different nations of the earth. They needed him. And so it is with every child of God. Every one who has been redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ owes himself to all men, to give himself as Christ gave Himself for them, that He might help them and redeem them.

What shall be the motive to prompt us in our work for mankind? There are many in the world who are working for humanity’s sake. We praise God for that, and never for one moment will we do anything but praise God for every effort that is being put forth by whomsoever it may be to lift up fallen humanity. But to work for humanity’s sake alone, does not meet the issue. If you are working for humanity’s sake alone, if you are measuring it by humanity, you will always stop short of God’s great plan for the salvation of men. You will get to measuring the worth of men according to your own human judgment.

It is probable that if you had asked that priest or Levite that went down from Jerusalem to Jericho as to what their motives were for working, they would tell you that they were working for humanity’s sake; but when they looked upon that poor man, they did not think that he was worth working for. And so if we get to working for humanity alone, we will get to judging. If we saw a poor bloated drunkard, or a morphine fiend upon whom one could not lay two fingers without touching abscesses caused by hypodermic injections, in human judgment we would say, He is not worth working for; let him go to some hospital. But God has given us a deeper motive than that, and that is

Working for Them for Christ’s Sake.

And working for them for Christ’s sake, we will never ask for one moment whether the soul is worthy or not; but is he needy? That is the spirit in which Christ worked, and that is the spirit in which He demands that we shall work. Working in that spirit we will never stop to measure the worth of men. God is able and willing to put eternal worth into men if they will only yield themselves to Christ, and therefore we labor for that man, for His sake, in His name. God in His goodness who saved us, is able to take man in the lowest depths of iniquity to-day and lift him up, and make him to the praise of the glory of His grace. “For the love of Christ constraineth us.”

Some of us came over to these buildings before there was any work done upon them. What wretched things they were! We look them over to-day, and view them to the praise of the men who have been working so hard upon them for the last few days. This is an example of their work. Well, that is only the weakest sort of an illustration of what the Lord Jesus Christ can do; for He can go clear down into the lowest depths and take the sin leper, who is poisoned all through and through with the virus of the worst forms of iniquity, and by His own mighty power He can cleanse him and make him a child of God, so that throughout all eternity he will be to the praise of the glory of God’s grace. Will we not give ourselves to God to engage in such a work as that? Here are some of the promises:—

“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer. . . . And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” Isa. 58:6–14.

How many there are that are clear down in ill health, sickness, and discouraged! There is no such remedy to take away discouragement as glad-heartedness in helping others. “Then shall . . . thine health spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee.” Men will hear of it before you get there. “The glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward.” God will be behind and before. Prayers will be answered. Criticism will cease. Faces will shine in the light of God. The darkness of despair will flee; hope’s sun will light your pathway, for the assurance abides that God is guiding continually. There is a time of drought coming in this sinful world, but the child of God shall be like a well-watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters fail not (margin, “lie not”); men will come to you for refreshing help, and not be deceived. What precious promises are these in the work God has given us to do! Go out into the highways and hedges.

There is coming a time when that work will be finished. And then shall it be said: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me.” But God’s love is so much greater than anything that man can do, that the righteous forget all their deeds in the light of the wonderful glory of God. Not one will then be worth mentioning. They will ask, “When, Lord, did we do any of these things unto Thee?” And then comes the answer, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” But the “least of these” may have been when he came to us a poor, wretched drunkard, or the lame, the blind, the needy; but they were the purchase of Jesus Christ’s blood, and the Lord regards them as identified with Himself.

O friends, let us engage in this blessed work here, and have a part in the glory which shall be hereafter!