Newsletter May
More Than a Negative
Even if you’ve never had to testify in court, a thousand TV shows have made you familiar with the question, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” Why not just make people swear to tell the truth? Or make them promise not to lie?
Any parent who has ever had to interrogate a child about a broken cookie jar or a scuffle over a toy knows the answer. There are plenty of ways to try to get out of trouble without technically lying. You tell just enough of the truth to skate on by.
We often play the game of seeing how close we can get to sinning without technically going over the line.
But in our heart of hearts we know that this is not what God intended when He gave us the commandments. He’s not giving us a merely negative rule and challenging us to just barely stay away from this or that. There is much more to each commandment than a prohibition. We shouldn’t just avoid murdering people — we should be of service to our neighbor.
For each negative prohibition in the commandments there is a positive good that we are to cherish and protect. In the Eighth Commandment, that gift is the reputation of our neighbor and our relationship with him:
You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.
Your relationship with your family members (who are your nearest neighbors), the other members of your congregation, your coworkers and your friends is one of the most precious gifts you have been given. You need to exercise good stewardship with this gift just as much as you need to exercise good stewardship with your life, resources, time and income. This is an especially fragile gift because it’s easy to ruin a relationship with slander and talking behind someone’s back.
But speaking well of your neighbor in Christian love is absolutely free; it costs you nothing, yet it pays you great dividends. If you find this challenging at times, if you are tempted to speak ill of others, just remember that this other person is also a beloved child of God for whom your Lord Jesus suffered and died. Your Lord Jesus loves you both.
Newsletter April
Whose Is It Anyway?
If you have every bought or sold a house, you are acquainted with the concept of a “title search.” Before you can sell your house, and before anyone else will feel comfortable putting down the money to buy it, you have to prove that you really own it. So a title company looks through the public records to ensure that you bought it from the person who really owned it, who bought it from the person who really owned it before that, all the way back to the earliest records of your state, including when your state was only a territory or colony of England.
Peak into a preschool classroom during playtime and you’ll see a simplified version of this. A child starts playing with a ball, but another child says, “That’s mine: I had it first.”
You can’t understand the Seventh Commandment without understanding this concept of ownership or title. As the Small Catechism puts it:
You shall not steal. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbor’s money or possessions, or get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income.
Your neighbor’s possessions are his: you don’t have a right to take them. And likewise, your possessions are yours. Ownership and property rights are foundational to any functioning society.
But there is something deeper to know about ownership, and that is the question of who has the title and ownership to you? Paul says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1Corinthians 6:19-20).
If you yourself are owned by God, then of course everything that you own, you really only possess by God’s leave: all of it, at bottom, belongs to Him since you belong to Him. For you were bought with the blood of Christ.
This notion is the foundation of all Christian stewardship. It all belongs to God. It should all be used for things that bring honor to His name, blessings to our neighbors and the extension of His kingdom.
Newsletter March
Cherish What God Has Given
In the Small Catechism, Luther follows a pattern when explaining the Ten Commandments. With each commandment, there is something prohibited, and something commanded. There is something wrong which must be avoided, and there is something right which must be done.
The one time this pattern is not followed is with the Sixth Commandment.
“You shall not commit adultery. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other” (SC I).
Here, the catechism focuses solely on the positive: we should live in a chaste and decent manner in both word and deed, and husbands and wives should cherish and honor one another.
Keeping this commandment, and all of the commandments, is a lot easier if you see your chastity and your spouse as a gift from God that is to be protected and cherished. In the same way, you will find keeping the Fourth Commandment easier if you see your parents and other authorities as a gift from God, given to you for your blessing.
This is the key stewardship insight that runs through all of the Christian life: Everything that we have has been given to us by God. We deserve none of it. All of it comes to us by God’s fatherly kindness and open-handed generosity. If I know that everything I have - every possession, every relationship, every ability - is a gift from God, then my perspective changes. All of these things are both gifts to be cherished, and things that I should direct towards God’s purposes. My possessions should be shared generously according to how God has called me in my family, church and community. My spouse should be cherished, loved and encouraged in faith. My children are on loan from my own Heavenly Father, and I have but a brief time to show them the path of righteousness. My neighbor is a gift from God so that I can imitate His kindness toward me.
No matter the gift, everything has been given to me by God so that I may participate in His own goodness and open-handed generosity.
Newsletter February
Caring for My Neighbor
If any of the Ten Commandments might tempt us to think that keeping the Law is easy, it would be the Fifth Commandment. After all, how hard is it to get through life without murdering somebody? The vast majority of people can handle that!
But Jesus famously blows up this notion by pointing out that the command, “you shall not murder,” goes much deeper — down to the heart.
You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, “You fool!” will be liable to the hell of fire. (Matt. 5:21–22)
Hatred and disdain come from the same sort of crookedness of heart as murder. With both murder and hatred, you look down on another person and think them of little worth.
In the Small Catechism, Luther also points out that every “do not” in the commandments also includes a “do this:” “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body but help and support him in every physical need” (SC, Fifth Commandment, emphasis added).
We are not called merely to avoid evil; we must also do positive good.
So when Jesus drew near to us and became our neighbor by taking up our humanity, He came not only to avoid harming us, but He came to positively help us, bless us and serve us.
We are now called to show the love to our neighbors that Christ showed to us. Your neighbor is yet another gift that God has given you that requires your stewardship. We are called to show mercy, to be kind, to love and serve our neighbor. One aspect of this stewardship is financial: our neighbors need us to support the church’s work so that they can hear the Gospel and come to faith. Our neighbors need the church’s alms and mercy work. Our neighbors need our faithful service in all we do in the name of Christ.
Newsletter January
The Chief Stewards of Humanity: Mom and Dad
St. Paul tells the Ephesians that the first commandment with a specific promise attached to it is, “Honor your father and mother so that it may go well with you, and you may live long in the land” (Ephesians 6:2). This promise is one indication of the importance of this commandment. The other thing that highlights the special nature of this commandment is its placement within the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments are clearly organized in two big categories. The first three commandments deal with our relationship with God. This category is called the First Table of the Law. The last seven commandments, the Second Table of the Law, tell us how we should relate to other people. These two tables correspond to what Jesus calls the two greatest commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).
The order of the Second Table of the Law is also important. Murder is a greater sin than adultery, which is a greater sin that stealing, or lying, or coveting. But why is the Fourth Commandment first in the Second Table, ahead of “you shall not murder”? Is disobeying your parents really worse than murder? Or maybe we should give up on thinking these commandments are ordered?
The overall effect of this order is to get us to see our parents as a connection point between our neighbors and our God. Throughout our upbringing our father and mother stand between us and God and deliver His gifts to us: God clothes us, feeds us, protects us and teaches His Word to us through our parents.
So, parents have a very high calling from God. They are called to be stewards of the greatest gift: the gift of life.
Parenting thus gives us a keen insight into all our stewardship. Parents know that they have been given a great treasure in their children, a treasure that does not belong to them, yet for which they feel a great deal of responsibility. Truth be told, every gift we have been given is like this, because everything we have — whether our own personal skills and powers or our wealth and time — is all from God. He entrusts it all to us so that we can use it all and take care of it all for His great purposes.
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