Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:12 NLT
I think these are the most shocking words in the Bible. All the Torah and the Prophets? Really?! 780 pages can be distilled down to twelve words?! It surely took God a lot of verbiage to make that point. But, of course, that is just it. We are hardheaded. Everything in us says the opposite. They are supposed to give us what we want and maybe we will reciprocate, if we feel like it. Surely, if we give them what they want, with every likelihood that they won’t give it back, we would have to trust God to supply our needs. Ouch!
While sitting on the platform of a Romanian church in January, 1994, I saw a rather agitated man come in and walk down the side aisle looking pointedly at my host, who was sitting beside me. My host got up and went out with him. Later, my host said, “Do you know what that was about? I responded that I did not.
He told me that the agitated man was someone who was monitoring the newly-elected parliament (the communist dictator had been deposed and assassinated 13 months earlier). He was especially watching for legislation affecting the church. That day a bill limiting Christian freedom had been proposed and the man was saying to my friend that power had to be amassed at once to frustrate this move.
My friend said to me, “Do you know what I said to him?” Again I responded that I had no idea. He said, “I told him, ‘The weapons of the wolf are teeth and claws. The weapon of the Lamb is a bared throat.’” I will never forget that reply. It is profound and it is right. We defeat the world by dying for it. We defeat the world when we give to it what we would like it to give to us. Will it? Probably not. But that doesn’t matter because it will perceive in us a Divine power it can never have, the power to take all the evil it can pour out upon us and give back love. That is power.
Called To Be Transformed 