Why should that surprise us, though? No one can ever measure up to this standard – to God’s standard – in all respects. No one except Jesus himself. Only he is able to love all those (including us) who, by choosing sin over God, have made themselves his enemies. He blessed those who cursed and mocked him. When he was beaten before his crucifixion, he turned the other cheek rather than striking back. When they stripped him of his garments, he did not stop them. Instead, he gave his persecutors more than they had demanded. He gave everything he had: his very life and his forgiveness too.
When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. (Luke 23:33-34)
It is Holy Week as I write this, so Jesus’ unfathomable sacrifice for us on the cross is even more on my mind than usual. By laying down his life for sinners, the Savior set the ultimate example of how to love one’s enemies.
When we pray that God will shape us more and more into the image of his Son, being able to love our enemies is one of those Christ-like traits we’re praying for. A wise Bible professor once told me, “Don’t smile only when you feel like it; smile until you feel like it!” And then keep right on smiling, of course. I think a version of the same rule applies here. Don’t wait for the emotion to prompt action. Act out of obedience to God, and trust that your feelings will fall into place in time. In other words, show love to your enemy until you feel like it, and then keep right on loving.
So where can we begin? How about returning a kind word for a critical one, or going out of the way to do something generous for a person who won’t properly appreciate it? Will you pray for the one who has cheated and abused you – praying for God’s blessing on them, not for vengeance? Will you forgive a person who in no way deserves it, wishing him well despite what harm he may have done to you or to one you love? Elinor forgives Willoughby, who deeply injured her sister:
[Willoughby] held out his hand. [Elinor] could not refuse to give him hers; – he pressed it with affection. “And you do think something better of me than you did?” said he… Elinor assured him that she did – that she forgave, pitied, wished him well – was even interested in his happiness – (Sense and Sensibility, chapter 44)
Notice that Austen’s prayer petition doesn’t anywhere suggest limiting our kindness to only our friends. In fact, without a qualifying adjective, the implication is just the opposite – that it applies to all our fellow creatures. No, evil-doers like Willoughby don’t deserve our love and kindness… no more so than any of us deserves God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness. That’s kind of the point. That’s love divine, all other loves excelling.
Let Us Pray
Oh, Lord, when you command us to love our enemies, you ask a difficult thing. In our humanness alone, we cannot do it. Help us to be obedient through the empowering of your Holy Spirit, and cultivate within us Christ-like unconditional love, even for our enemies. We pray in Jesus’ name, remembering his perfect example. Amen.
Let Us Praise
Love divine, all loves excelling. Joy of heaven to earth come down! …Jesus, thou art all compassion. Pure unbounded love thou art. Visit us with thy salvation. Enter every trembling heart… Till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise. (traditional hymn: “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” text by Charles Wesley, 1707-1788)
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Good Balance
We thank thee with all our hearts for every gracious dispensation, for all the Blessings that have attended our Lives, for every hour of safety, health & peace, of domestic comfort & innocent enjoyment.
Gratefulness for God’s blessings rightly comprises a common theme in all three of Austen’s prayers, so we’ve covered some similar ground before. But I want to put a little different spin on things this time. In fact, to raise a caution. God’s good gifts, such as Austen has outlined for us above, can become tests, even points of stumbling, depending on what we do with them. Do we receive them with right attitudes, giving glory to God? Or do we, by the working of our sinful natures, take what is good and pervert it?
Safety and peace are indeed blessings, but they can allow a dangerous complacency, even laziness, to develop if we aren’t careful. Having adequate food and drink is important for good health; however overindulging can result in just the opposite. Enough money to provide for domestic comfort is desirable; hungering after riches and the luxury more and more money can buy is a form of idolatry. Wholesome entertainment and the fellowship of friends are innocent enjoyments we can rightly appreciate, but unwholesome ‘entertainments’ abound all around us. Similarly, having work we love to do is something to be thankful for, but even that can get out of control, exceeding healthy proportions.
Where is the boundary, though? We may be able to spot and avoid more obvious sins – things that are wrong all the time, no matter what the circumstances. With other things, it’s a balancing act, walking the uncertain line between just enough and sinful excess, between enjoying God’s good gifts and allowing them to become idols in our lives.
Since Mrs. Norris of Mansfield Park doesn’t seem to have many gifts to become obsessive about, you may be surprised that I’ve chosen her as an illustration of someone whose life is out of balance, who misuses her gifts and is ruled by excesses. Not having much money or power of her own didn’t hold her back, however.
Mrs. Norris had not the least intention of being at any expense whatever in [Fanny’s] maintenance… nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others: but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends… Under this infatuating principle, counteracted by no real affection for her sister, it was impossible for her to aim at more than the credit of projecting and arranging so expensive a charity; though perhaps she might so little know herself as to walk home to the Parsonage after this conversation, in the happy belief of being the most liberal-minded sister and aunt in the world. (Mansfield Park, chapter 1)
Having little money or importance of her own, she appropriated and exploited the wealth and prestige of her extended family. Because Lady Bertram was complacent and indolent (her own form of dangerous excess), Mrs. Norris very energetically ran her sister’s household, spent her money, influenced her children, and made Fanny’s life miserable. Mrs. Norris’s spirit of activity was not a bad trait in itself, just painfully misapplied.
How different might the outcome have been if Mrs. Norris had followed sounder principles! What if she had thanked God for her comfortable parsonage home and been satisfied, instead of lusting after money and the grandeur of the manor house? Seeing the deficit left by her sister’s lassitude and Sir Thomas’s absence, what if she had prayed for them to parent properly instead of charging in herself? What if she had assessed her own abilities humbly, asked for God’s direction where and how to apply them, and then acted with restraint and kindness?
There is a caution here for us as well, especially if we have been blessed materially. The Bible warns us,
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery… You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth… (Deuteronomy 8:10-18)
God is generous. But our sinful natures are all too proficient at taking God’s good gifts and turning them i
nto something unhealthy – by overindulgence, by forgetting the source of the blessing, by focusing more on the gift than the giver. Even with right intentions, we may lose our balance and cross over that line.
What is our safeguard, then? Gratitude. Look again at Austen’s prayer petition and the superlatives she uses. Let us thank God with all our hearts for all his blessings, remembering that we are indebted to him for every single hour of safety, health, peace, comfort and enjoyment. We can claim credit for none of it ourselves. That puts things in the proper perspective.
Let Us Pray
Father God, you are the giver of all good gifts. May we enjoy what you’ve given us, be grateful, and be satisfied. Teach us to keep these blessings in their proper place and use them for your glory, not our own. Grant this in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
Let Us Praise
Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom… The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. (Psalms 145:2-3, 15-16)
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Getting Our Just Deserts
We feel that we have been blessed far beyond any thing that we have deserved…
Advertisers are particularly quick to tell us – either in words or by clear implication – that we deserve the best of everything, including (and especially) the product they’re trying to sell us at that moment. They skillfully appeal to our vanity. They encourage our pride. “You’re a person of discriminating taste,” they tell us, “so don’t accept anything less than the best. You have the right to a car/house/wardrobe that measures up to your high standards. You work hard; you deserve to treat yourself once in a while, to indulge your whims and secret fantasies. It’s all about you. You deserve a break today!”
It’s a winning sales approach since, as advertisers know, most people are predisposed to believe that line of reasoning. Everybody likes to see themselves in the very best light, worthy of every good thing. Mr. Wickham is no different.
“A man of honour could not have doubted the intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it – or to treat it as a merely conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim to it by extravagance, imprudence – in short anything and nothing. Certain it is, that the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was of an age to hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no less certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done anything to deserve to lose it. I have a warm, unguarded temper, and I may have spoken my opinion of him, and to him, too freely. I can recall nothing worse…” (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 16)
Mr. Wickham must suffer from a severe case of selective memory, because he seems to have completely forgotten that he specifically resigned all claim to assistance in the church and was compensated accordingly. And his reflections on his behavior conveniently omit any mention of the vicious propensities, the want of principle, the idleness and dissipation his former friend had opportunity to closely observe (as outlined in Darcy’s letter, chapter 35), things that made him completely unsuitable for the clergy.
Our memories are probably selective too. We may know better, but pride whispers in our ears that we have earned every good thing that comes to us and more, that we don’t deserve any blame or misfortune. Therefore, when bad things happen, we are tempted to cry, “It isn’t fair!”
This is one of Satan’s most effective tactics. He tempts us to doubt God’s goodness when things don’t go our way, when we don’t get absolutely everything we desire. After all, it’s not like God isn’t capable. One word from him and it’s a done deal. So why doesn’t he act? Satan tells us the answer is that God doesn’t care. Lies like this have been the enemy’s stock and trade from the very beginning:
NOW THE serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-6)
Basically, Satan was telling Adam and Eve, “God is lying. He’s holding out on you! You know what you want, and you deserve to get it. Since God’s hogging all the glory for himself, you’re going to have to simply take what you want. Stand up for your rights, and then you’ll get more respect!”
It was a successful strategy then, and it still works today. At the heart of all human sin is the desire to be our own gods, the belief that we’re smart enough to run our own lives, that we have the sovereign right to decide for ourselves what to think, say, and do. In the fallen state, we want to live by our own rules instead of God’s. We want to deny God’s legitimate authority over us and our responsibility to submit to him.
Although we may still be tempted to rebel against God’s authority, in big ways or small, as Christians we know the truth. The facts are these. God is God, and he has the right to rule. We are his creations, with the responsibility to love and obey him. We are also sinners. And since the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), that is what we actually deserve: death. Without Jesus, that is what we would in fact receive.
Therefore, we don’t view our less-than-perfect circumstances as a reason to doubt God’s goodness. Quite the opposite. As Jane Austen wrote, We feel that we have been blessed far beyond any thing that we have deserved. We recognize every good gift – life itself and especially salvation – as proof of God’s incredible love for us, proof of his amazing grace.
So, unlike Wickham, we know it’s wisest not to demand what we’ve earned, which would be a death sentence. Far better to leave our fates up to our benevolent and generous Father. God has given and will continue to give us far better than we deserve.
Let Us Pray
Heavenly Father, how grateful we are for your amazing grace, that by your love you bless us far beyond anything we have a right to expect. Guard us against the enemy’s lies and against the temptation to pride, keeping us ever mindful that it is only through our Savior that we can escape the judgment we truly deserve. It is in Jesus’ precious name we pray. Amen.
Let Us Praise
SHOUT FOR joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. (Psalms 100:1-5)
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The Accomplished Lady
…and though we cannot but pray for a continuance of all these Mercies, we acknowledge our unworthiness of them & implore Thee to pardon the presumption of our desires.
Since Jane Austen here continues on the theme of the blessings God gives despite our unworthiness, I thought I would take the opportunity to share something else I came across when I was looking for an illustration for the previous devotional segment based on the word ‘deserve’ – another passage that demonstrates the contrast between the world’s standards and God’s.
You will remember this scene in Pride and Prejudice – the tediously long evening in the drawing room at Netherfield, where Elizabeth has gone to nurse her sister Jane back to health. At one point, Mr. Bingley declares how amazed he is that young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished, as they all are. Mr. Darcy immediately takes him to task over such an exaggeration, saying that the word ‘accomplished’ is too liberally applied. Naturally, Miss Bingley is right there to take Darcy’s side.
“Oh! Certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, �
��no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved.” (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 8)
Mr. Darcy agrees and adds yet something more substantial to the list: the improvement of her mind by extensive reading. I can practically see Elizabeth rolling her eyes before remarking that she has never seen such a woman, such a paragon of virtue.
While there is nothing wrong with any of these ‘accomplishments,’ it strikes me that God’s list would look very different than Miss Bingley’s. His lists for what’s important do look very different. What lists am I referring to? He gave us the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) for starters, and the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5). But if you want a really daunting personal challenge, check out Proverbs 31:10-31, entitled “The Wife of Noble Character” (although I think we could apply a very similar list to men). There’s no room to include the entire passage here, but it itemizes examples showing she is hardworking, enterprising, prudent, generous, and wise. And to all this is added something more substantial; she is also God-fearing.
She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. (Proverbs 31:25-30)
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