Demands, Deserves, Desire

What does it take to get into heaven? This question was asked of Jesus and the subsequent conversation provides an invaluable understanding of how, as Christians, we should live our lives.

Notes:

Two Questions

Many years ago, back in the late 70s and early 80s, I did a lot of what was referred to back then as cold-call evangelism. I would go door-to-door and to public spaces—like malls and airports—to share the gospel and witness to people about what Christ had done for me. I had been trained in various gospel presentations and in techniques that would enable me to respond to “objections” people might raise and “win” them to Christ.

One of the techniques I used started with two “diagnostic” questions. The first diagnostic question was, “If you died tonight, do you think you’d go to heaven?”

How would you answer this question? How do you think most people would answer this question?

Almost every time, of the many, many, times I’ve asked people this question, the answer I get is, “Yes, I think I would go to heaven.” That’s what I expected them to say. That’s the answer I wanted them to give. It set them up for my second question which was, “If God asked you, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say?”

How would you respond to this question? How do you think most people respond?

Most people respond by telling me what a good person they are and support their contention by giving me examples of good things they do or have done—go to church, tried to be honest, served as a volunteer fireman, etc. They think that because they’ve lived a pretty good life, they’ve tried to do the best they can, God will let them into heaven.

Most of us know we’re not perfect. But we figure God doesn’t expect perfection. If he did, he’d have to send us all to hell. He isn’t going to do that. So God, we feel certain, only expects us to be “good,” to do the best we can to be good. No, we’re not as good as Mother Teresa, but neither are we as bad as Adolf Hitler. We’re somewhere between these two extremes. Somewhere in the middle. Good enough to get into heaven.

Many believe that God will weigh their good deeds against their bad deeds. (Picture God with a giant balance—good deeds on one side and bad on the other.) And they think that, on balance, their good deeds outweigh the bad ones and, therefore, they’re good enough to get into heaven.
This second diagnostic question is designed to reveal what a person is really trusting in to get them into heaven. When I explain the truth to someone I’m witnessing to, that no one’s “good works” will be enough to satisfy God and get them into heaven, and that the good news is that we can be saved only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, people often then backtrack and say something like, “Oh, yes, I believe in Jesus Christ. That’s what I’d say to God.” But their initial answer—citing their good works—reveals what they’re really trusting in.

So, what do you think? What does it take to get into heaven? Is it by living a good life? Or, is it by faith in Jesus as your Savior?

Let’s look at what Jesus had to say about getting into heaven.

What must I do?

[We will consider three parallel accounts of Jesus’ encounter with this expert in God’s law: Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-37]

A devout and religious Jewish leader, an “expert” in God’s law, once asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life” (Luke 10:25)?

How would you have answered his question? How do you think Jesus answered him?

I think many of us would expect Jesus to have said to this man, “You have nothing to worry about. You are a very sincere, devout man who certainly pleases God and you’ll go to heaven.”

But that was not what Jesus said.

The expert knew the answer to his own question. (After all, he was an expert in God’s law.) He had his own ideas as to what one must do to inherit eternal life. Luke tells us, that in fact, he asked Jesus this question to “test” him.

Jesus knew the expert had his own convictions about this matter. That was why he turned the question back on him. “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?”

To please God, to inherit eternal life, to get into heaven, every Jew knew you must obey God’s commandments (see Matthew 5:17-20). But there are hundreds of commands God gave his people, and no one can obey all of them perfectly. So the question the expert was really asking was, “Which, of all the commandments, is the most important, the greatest commandment” (see Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34)? In other words, what is the real heart of the Law, what one thing must a person do to please God and inherit eternal life? Jesus knew this was the real question and that was why he responded as he did, “How do you interpret the Law?”

The expert’s interpretation of the Law was, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind is most important—more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices. And the second, which is inseparable from the greatest, is to love your neighbor as yourself” ( Luke 10:27; Mark 12:33; see Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Leviticus 19:18).

And Jesus commended his interpretation, “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40). “Do this and you will live” (Luke 10:28).

To which the expert responded in hearty agreement, “Well said, teacher. You are right” (Mark 12:32)! Jesus had passed his test. They were in agreement. They were kindred spirits. They had a mutual love for God and desire to please him. This was why the expert asked a follow-up question: “And who is my neighbor” (Luke 10:29)?

Luke tells us the expert asked his follow-up question because he wanted to “justify” himself. I don’t think this should be taken negatively. I think the expert sincerely wanted to obey God, he wanted to “do this and live.” He was asking Jesus how to do it because he wanted to please God. He was asking for clarification. That’s why Jesus didn’t chastise him for asking. He responded to his question.

Jesus told him the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35). Three men, a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan, traveling along a road came upon a man who had been attacked by robbers—left stripped, beaten and half dead. The priest and the Levite avoided the man. The Samaritan, however, “took pity on him.” He bandaged his wounds, brought him to an inn, took care of him and paid for him to stay there and be cared for till he recovered.

Then Jesus asked the expert, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers” (Luke 10:36)?

The expert replied, “The one who had mercy on [loved] him.”

Jesus commended him. “When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34). “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

What think about this conversation? About what Jesus said?

Part 2: Faith or Works?

Back when I was doing cold-call evangelism I would have been thrilled to have had someone ask me the question this expert asked Jesus. (”What must I do to inherit eternal life?”) But I would have given a very different answer than Jesus gave. I would have told this expert that it is only by grace through faith in Jesus that we can go to heaven. It’s not by anything we “do”—not in the sense of good works by which we can get into heaven.

This was not what Jesus said to his questioner. He didn’t say anything about being saved by grace through faith. He told the expert he must “do” this to live, and to go and “do” likewise. According to Jesus what God expects from us, what he demands from us—for this is the greatest commandment— is to love him with all our hearts, souls, strength and minds. And this love for God will show itself in our lives, we will bear the fruit of loving people selflessly, self-sacrificially.

Are you doing this? Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind? And is your love for God bearing the fruit of selfless love for others? Will you, according to Jesus, inherit eternal life?

What’s your response to Jesus and what he said? Here’s some suggestions:
(1) “No one can love God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind. That’s impossible. I don’t know how to explain what Jesus said. I don’t want to think about it. I know what I believe. I’m comfortable and confident with that. I feel certain I’m going to get into heaven.”

(2) “I don’t know why Jesus said what he did. I know that I’m saved by grace through faith, not by what I do. I believe in Jesus as my Savior. I believe I’ll go to heaven.”

(3) “Jesus said what he did because it’s the truth. This is what God demands from us: to love him supremely, with all that we are. That’s what I so desperately want to do. And I want my life to glorify God by bearing the fruit of selfless love for others. This is what I have earnestly tried to do. This is the person I’ve tried to be… and I know I can’t do it. I realize by experience, how weak I am. How sinful I am. How utterly helpless I am to be the kind of person God demands I be. I repent. I cry out to God for mercy.

“The Greatest Commandment, shows we the kind of person God wants me to be, and it’s what I want to be. So I love what Jesus said here. It’s the Law, what Jesus said, that has driven me to cry out to God for mercy; that has driven me to Jesus, to the One who can save me, who will give me a new heart and transform me increasingly into the God-lover that God demands and that I long to be. The Law has driven me to grace and to faith. The life I now live in the body (the things I “do”), I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20-21).

This was what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Christians in Galatia.

Its [the Law’s] purpose was to make obvious to everyone that we are, in ourselves, out of right relationship with God, and therefore to show us the futility of devising some religious system for getting by our own efforts what we can only get by waiting in faith for God to complete his promise. For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time. (Galatians 3:21-22 MSG)

Jesus said to the expert that he “was not far from the kingdom of God.” The expert was headed in the right direction, he was not far, but he was not there yet. Jesus reinforced to the expert the Law’s demands to whet, to encourage his appetite for God and drive him on to seek God’s mercy by grace through faith… in Jesus.

Jesus said all the Law and the teaching of the Prophets “hang” on these two commandments. It is surprising and wonderful that the almighty God does not demand from us great religious acts of subservience, but rather, he demands from us our complete love.
Does the Greatest Commandment drive you to Christ? Have you felt the weight of God’s rightful demands and your inability to meet them?

What does he deserve?

To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is what God demands. But let me ask you, what do you think God—your creator, sustainer and Savior—deserves from you?
I would like to tell you about Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf (1700-1760). God used him to form a Christian community from which the first “modern” missionaries were sent out. John Stott described Zinzendorf as man who had a simple, unquestioning, unyielding and all-embracing devotion to the Lamb of God.

He loved Jesus Christ from his childhood and determined before he was ten years old to be a preacher of the gospel…. If he had a spiritual crisis in his life, it was when he was nineteen. Newly graduated in law, he was sent off (like every eighteenth-century nobleman) to complete his education and become “a man of the world” by touring European cities, beginning with Paris. “If the object of my being sent to France is to make me a man of the world,” he wrote, “I declare that this is money thrown away; for God will in his goodness preserve me in the desire to live only for Jesus Christ.” In Düsseldorf he visited the art gallery and was taken by a masterly painting of Jesus Christ by Domenico Fetti, an early seventeenth-century Italian artist. It was his Ecce Homo, now in Munich, portraying Jesus as Pilate presented him to the crowd after his scourging—clothed in purple, bound with ropes, and crowned with thorns. Zinzendorf stood before it transfixed. The eyes of Christ seemed to penetrate his heart, while the words of Christ written in Latin above and beneath the painting seemed to be addressed directly to him:

This I did for you;
What are you doing for me?

“There and then,” writes A. J. Lewis, “the young Count asked the crucified Christ to draw him into ‘the fellowship of his sufferings’ and to open up a life of service to him.” (Focus on Christ)

As Zinzendorf considered what Jesus had done for him, he felt a tremendous sense of obligation. Jesus had given so much for him, and he, in turn, had given so little for him. “This I did for you; what are you doing for me?” Jesus deserved better from him.

This sense of obligation (see Romans 8:12) to Christ reminds me of a hymn, the words of which I find beautiful and challenging. When I Survey the Wondrous Cross by Isacc Watts (1674-1748).

When I survey the wondrous Cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God:
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

“Love so amazing, so divine, demands [deserves] my soul, my life, my all.” How can we give God so little, when he has given us so much?

Part 3: What do you desire to give him?

To Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind is what God demands, it is what he deserves, and isn’t it what you desire, you want to give to him?

I find what Peter wrote to his Christian brothers and sisters who, even though they were “suffering grief in all kinds of trials,” “greatly rejoiced” in their relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. (1 Peter 1:6-8 NLT)

What I find so outstanding in what Peter wrote is this description of readers, “You love him even though you have never seen him.” You “love” him."

True Love to the Unseen Christ

Thomas Vincent (1634-1678), a puritan writer, expounded this passage in a book entitled, The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ. Vincent wrote this about loving Christ:

The life of Christianity very much consists of our love for Christ. Without love for Christ we are as much without spiritual life as a carcass is without natural life when the soul has fled from it. Faith without love to Christ is a dead faith, and a Christian without love to Christ is a dead Christian—dead in his sins and trespasses. Without love to Christ we may have the name of Christians, but we are wholly without the nature of Christians; we may have the form of godliness, but are wholly without its power (cf. 2 Timothy 3:5). “Give me thine heart,” is the language of God to all the children of men (Proverbs 23:26). ‘And give me thy love,’ is the language of Christ unto all of his disciples.

Christ knows the command and influence which true and strong love for him has; how it will engage all of the other affections of his disciples for him—that if he has their love, then their desires will be chiefly for him, their delights will be chiefly in him, their hopes and expectations will be chiefly from him—and their hatred, fear, grief, and anger will be carried forth chiefly unto sin, because it is offensive to him.

He knows that love will engage and employ all of the powers and faculties of their souls for him: their thoughts will be brought into captivity and obedience unto him (2 Corinthians 10:5); their understandings will be employed in seeking and finding out his truths; their memories will be receptacles for retaining them; their consciences will be ready to accuse and excuse as his faithful deputies; their wills will choose and refuse according to his direction and revealed pleasure.

All of their senses and the members of their bodies will be his servants: their eyes will see for him, their ears will hear for him, their tongues will speak for him, their hands will work for him, their feet will walk for him. All of their gifts and talents will be dedicated to his devotion and service.

If he has their love, they will be ready to do for him whatever he requires; they will be ready to suffer for him whatever he calls them unto. If they have much love to him, they will not think much of denying themselves, taking up his cross, and following him wherever he leads them (Matthew 16:24).

And because love for Christ is so essential to true Christianity, so earnestly looked for by our Lord and Master, so powerfully commanding in the soul and over the whole man, and so greatly influential upon our duty, I have made love for Christ the subject of this treatise; and my chief endeavor in it shall be to excite and provoke Christians unto the lively and vigorous exercise of this grace of love unto the Lord Jesus Christ, for there is a great and universal need of it.

Does this get tedious for you? Vincent goes on page-after-page describing the glory of true love to the unseen Christ. Don’t you want these things to be true of you? Is this the kind of relationship you desire with Christ?

What does Jesus mean to you?

Let me share with you another passage which spoke to me about the kind of love for God that I desire:

A guy we know named Alan went around the country asking ministry leaders questions. He went to successful churches and asked the pastors what they were doing, why what they were doing was working. It sounded very boring except for one visit he made to a man named Bill Bright, the president of a big ministry. Alan said he was a big man, full of life, who listened without shifting his eyes. Alan asked a few questions. I don’t know what they were, but as a final question he asked Dr. Bright what Jesus meant to him. Alan said Dr. Bright could not answer the question. He said Dr. Bright just started to cry. He sat there in his big chair behind his big desk and wept.

When Alan told that story I wondered what it was like to love Jesus that way. I wondered, quite honestly, if that Bill Bright guy was just nuts or if he really knew Jesus in a personal way, so well that he would cry at the very mention of His name. I knew that I would like to know Jesus like that, with my heart, not just my head. I felt like that would be the key to something. (Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz)

And then, let me conclude with a short writing by Frederick Faber (1814-1863):

Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us…. There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts.

We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him.

Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.

“To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind is most important—more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices. And the second, which is inseparable from the greatest, is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is what God demands.
This is what God deserves.
This, I hope, is what you desire to give him.