lawyers

166:1.5When Je­sus would have risen to de­part, one of the lawyers who was at the ta­ble, ad­dress­ing him, said: “But, Mas­ter, in some of your state­ments you re­proach us also. Is there noth­ing good in the scribes, the Phar­isees, or the lawyers?” And Je­sus, stand­ing, replied to the lawyer: “You, like the Phar­isees, de­light in the first places at the feasts and in wear­ing long robes while you put heavy bur­dens, griev­ous to be borne, on men’s shoul­ders. And when the souls of men stag­ger un­der these heavy bur­dens, you will not so much as lift with one of your fin­gers. Woe upon you who take your great­est de­light in build­ing tombs for the proph­ets your fa­thers killed! And that you con­sent to what your fa­thers did is made man­i­fest when you now plan to kill those who come in this day do­ing what the proph­ets did in their day—pro­claim­ing the righ­teous­ness of God and re­veal­ing the mercy of the heav­enly Fa­ther. But of all the gen­er­a­tions that are past, the blood of the proph­ets and the apos­tles shall be re­quired of this per­verse and self-righ­teous gen­er­a­tion. Woe upon all of you lawyers who have taken away the key of knowl­edge from the com­mon peo­ple! You your­selves refuse to en­ter into the way of truth, and at the same time you would hin­der all oth­ers who seek to en­ter therein. But you can­not thus shut up the doors of the king­dom of heaven; these we have opened to all who have the faith to en­ter, and these por­tals of mercy shall not be closed by the prej­u­dice and ar­ro­gance of false teach­ers and un­true shep­herds who are like whited sepul­chres which, while out­wardly they ap­pear beau­ti­ful, are in­wardly full of dead men’s bones and all man­ner of spir­i­tual un­clean­ness.”

174:4.2Then came for­ward one of the groups of the Phar­isees to ask ha­rass­ing ques­tions, and the spokesman, sig­nal­ing to Je­sus, said: “Mas­ter, I am a lawyer, and I would like to ask you which, in your opin­ion, is the great­est com­mand­ment?” Je­sus an­swered: “There is but one com­mand­ment, and that one is the great­est of all, and that com­mand­ment is: ‘Hear O Is­rael, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great com­mand­ment. And the sec­ond com­mand­ment is like this first; in­deed, it springs di­rectly there­from, and it is: ‘You shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.’ There is no other com­mand­ment greater than these; on these two com­mand­ments hang all the law and the proph­ets.”

174:4.3When the lawyer per­ceived that Je­sus had an­swered not only in ac­cor­dance with the high­est con­cept of Jew­ish re­li­gion, but that he had also an­swered wisely in the sight of the as­sem­bled mul­ti­tude, he thought it the bet­ter part of valor openly to com­mend the Mas­ter’s re­ply. Ac­cord­ingly, he said: “Of a truth, Mas­ter, you have well said that God is one and there is none be­side him; and that to love him with all the heart, un­der­stand­ing, and strength, and also to love one’s neigh­bor as one’s self, is the first and great com­mand­ment; and we are agreed that this great com­mand­ment is much more to be re­garded than all the burnt of­fer­ings and sac­ri­fices.” When the lawyer an­swered thus dis­creetly, Je­sus looked down upon him and said, “My friend, I per­ceive that you are not far from the king­dom of God.”

174:4.4Je­sus spoke the truth when he re­ferred to this lawyer as be­ing “not far from the king­dom,” for that very night he went out to the Mas­ter’s camp near Geth­sem­ane, pro­fessed faith in the gospel of the king­dom, and was bap­tized by Josiah, one of the dis­ci­ples of Ab­ner.

195:2.4And these Ro­mans were a great peo­ple. They could gov­ern the Oc­ci­dent be­cause they did gov­ern them­selves. Such un­par­al­leled hon­esty, de­vo­tion, and stal­wart self-con­trol was ideal soil for the re­cep­tion and growth of Chris­tian­ity.

195:2.5It was easy for these Greco-Ro­mans to be­come just as spir­i­tu­ally de­voted to an in­sti­tu­tional church as they were po­lit­i­cally de­voted to the state. The Ro­mans fought the church only when they feared it as a com­peti­tor of the state. Rome, hav­ing lit­tle na­tional phi­los­o­phy or na­tive cul­ture, took over Greek cul­ture for its own and boldly adopted Christ as its moral phi­los­o­phy. Chris­tian­ity be­came the moral cul­ture of Rome but hardly its re­li­gion in the sense of be­ing the in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in spir­i­tual growth of those who em­braced the new re­li­gion in such a whole­sale man­ner. True, in­deed, many in­di­vid­u­als did pen­e­trate be­neath the sur­face of all this state re­li­gion and found for the nour­ish­ment of their souls the real val­ues of the hid­den mean­ings held within the la­tent truths of Hel­le­nized and pa­ganized Chris­tian­ity.

195:2.6The Stoic and his sturdy ap­peal to “na­ture and con­science” had only the bet­ter pre­pared all Rome to re­ceive Christ, at least in an in­tel­lec­tual sense. The Ro­man was by na­ture and train­ing a lawyer; he revered even the laws of na­ture. And now, in Chris­tian­ity, he dis­cerned in the laws of na­ture the laws of God. A peo­ple that could pro­duce Ci­cero and Vergil were ripe for Paul’s Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity.