The Decapolis Tour

159:5.1At Phil­a­del­phia, where James was work­ing, Je­sus taught the dis­ci­ples about the pos­i­tive na­ture of the gospel of the king­dom. When, in the course of his re­marks, he in­ti­mated that some parts of the Scrip­ture were more truth-con­tain­ing than oth­ers and ad­mon­ished his hear­ers to feed their souls upon the best of the spir­i­tual food, James in­ter­rupted the Mas­ter, ask­ing: “Would you be good enough, Mas­ter, to sug­gest to us how we may choose the bet­ter pas­sages from the Scrip­tures for our per­sonal ed­i­fi­ca­tion?” And Je­sus replied: “Yes, James, when you read the Scrip­tures look for those eter­nally true and di­vinely beau­ti­ful teach­ings, such as:

159:5.2“Cre­ate in me a clean heart, O Lord.

159:5.3“The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want.

159:5.4“You should love your neigh­bor as your­self.

159:5.5“For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, say­ing, fear not; I will help you.

159:5.6“Nei­ther shall the na­tions learn war any more.”

159:5.7And this is il­lus­tra­tive of the way Je­sus, day by day, ap­pro­pri­ated the cream of the He­brew scrip­tures for the in­struc­tion of his fol­low­ers and for in­clu­sion in the teach­ings of the new gospel of the king­dom. Other re­li­gions had sug­gested the thought of the near­ness of God to man, but Je­sus made the care of God for man like the so­lic­i­tude of a lov­ing fa­ther for the wel­fare of his de­pen­dent chil­dren and then made this teach­ing the cor­ner­stone of his re­li­gion. And thus did the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God make im­per­a­tive the prac­tice of the broth­er­hood of man. The wor­ship of God and the ser­vice of man be­came the sum and sub­stance of his re­li­gion. Je­sus took the best of the Jew­ish re­li­gion and trans­lated it to a wor­thy set­ting in the new teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom.

159:5.8Je­sus put the spirit of pos­i­tive ac­tion into the pas­sive doc­trines of the Jew­ish re­li­gion. In the place of neg­a­tive com­pli­ance with cer­e­mo­nial re­quire­ments, Je­sus en­joined the pos­i­tive do­ing of that which his new re­li­gion re­quired of those who ac­cepted it. Je­sus’ re­li­gion con­sisted not merely in be­liev­ing, but in ac­tu­ally do­ing, those things which the gospel re­quired. He did not teach that the essence of his re­li­gion con­sisted in so­cial ser­vice, but rather that so­cial ser­vice was one of the cer­tain ef­fects of the pos­ses­sion of the spirit of true re­li­gion.

159:5.9Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the bet­ter half of a Scrip­ture while he re­pu­di­ated the lesser por­tion. His great ex­hor­ta­tion, “Love your neigh­bor as your­self,” he took from the Scrip­ture which reads: “You shall not take vengeance against the chil­dren of your peo­ple, but you shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.” Je­sus ap­pro­pri­ated the pos­i­tive por­tion of this Scrip­ture while re­ject­ing the neg­a­tive part. He even op­posed neg­a­tive or purely pas­sive non­re­sis­tance. Said he: “When an en­emy smites you on one cheek, do not stand there dumb and pas­sive but in pos­i­tive at­ti­tude turn the other; that is, do the best thing pos­si­ble ac­tively to lead your brother in er­ror away from the evil paths into the bet­ter ways of righ­teous liv­ing.” Je­sus re­quired his fol­low­ers to re­act pos­i­tively and ag­gres­sively to ev­ery life sit­u­a­tion. The turn­ing of the other cheek, or what­ever act that may typ­ify, de­mands ini­tia­tive, ne­ces­si­tates vig­or­ous, ac­tive, and coura­geous ex­pres­sion of the be­liever’s per­son­al­ity.

159:5.10Je­sus did not ad­vo­cate the prac­tice of neg­a­tive sub­mis­sion to the in­dig­ni­ties of those who might pur­posely seek to im­pose upon the prac­ti­tion­ers of non­re­sis­tance to evil, but rather that his fol­low­ers should be wise and alert in the quick and pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of good to evil to the end that they might ef­fec­tively over­come evil with good. For­get not, the truly good is in­vari­ably more pow­er­ful than the most ma­lig­nant evil. The Mas­ter taught a pos­i­tive stan­dard of righ­teous­ness: “Whoso­ever wishes to be my dis­ci­ple, let him dis­re­gard him­self and take up the full mea­sure of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily to fol­low me.” And he so lived him­self in that “he went about do­ing good.” And this as­pect of the gospel was well il­lus­trated by many para­bles which he later spoke to his fol­low­ers. He never ex­horted his fol­low­ers pa­tiently to bear their obli­ga­tions but rather with en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to live up to the full mea­sure of their hu­man re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­vine priv­i­leges in the king­dom of God.

159:5.11When Je­sus in­structed his apos­tles that they should, when one un­justly took away the coat, of­fer the other gar­ment, he re­ferred not so much to a lit­eral sec­ond coat as to the idea of do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive to save the wrong­doer in the place of the olden ad­vice to re­tal­i­ate—“an eye for an eye” and so on. Je­sus ab­horred the idea ei­ther of re­tal­i­a­tion or of be­com­ing just a pas­sive suf­ferer or vic­tim of in­jus­tice. On this oc­ca­sion he taught them the three ways of con­tend­ing with, and re­sist­ing, evil:

159:5.121. To re­turn evil for evil—the pos­i­tive but un­righ­teous method.

159:5.132. To suf­fer evil with­out com­plaint and with­out re­sis­tance—the purely neg­a­tive method.

159:5.143. To re­turn good for evil, to as­sert the will so as to be­come mas­ter of the sit­u­a­tion, to over­come evil with good—the pos­i­tive and righ­teous method.

159:5.15One of the apos­tles once asked: “Mas­ter, what should I do if a stranger forced me to carry his pack for a mile?” Je­sus an­swered: “Do not sit down and sigh for re­lief while you be­rate the stranger un­der your breath. Righ­teous­ness comes not from such pas­sive at­ti­tudes. If you can think of noth­ing more ef­fec­tively pos­i­tive to do, you can at least carry the pack a sec­ond mile. That will of a cer­tainty chal­lenge the un­righ­teous and un­godly stranger.”

159:5.16The Jews had heard of a God who would for­give re­pen­tant sin­ners and try to for­get their mis­deeds, but not un­til Je­sus came, did men hear about a God who went in search of lost sheep, who took the ini­tia­tive in look­ing for sin­ners, and who re­joiced when he found them will­ing to re­turn to the Fa­ther’s house. This pos­i­tive note in re­li­gion Je­sus ex­tended even to his prayers. And he con­verted the neg­a­tive golden rule into a pos­i­tive ad­mo­ni­tion of hu­man fair­ness.

159:5.17In all his teach­ing Je­sus un­fail­ingly avoided dis­tract­ing de­tails. He shunned flow­ery lan­guage and avoided the mere po­etic im­agery of a play upon words. He ha­bit­u­ally put large mean­ings into small ex­pres­sions. For pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion Je­sus re­versed the cur­rent mean­ings of many terms, such as salt, leaven, fish­ing, and lit­tle chil­dren. He most ef­fec­tively em­ployed the an­tithe­sis, com­par­ing the minute to the in­fi­nite and so on. His pic­tures were strik­ing, such as, “The blind lead­ing the blind.” But the great­est strength to be found in his il­lus­tra­tive teach­ing was its nat­u­ral­ness. Je­sus brought the phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion from heaven down to earth. He por­trayed the el­e­men­tal needs of the soul with a new in­sight and a new be­stowal of af­fec­tion.