JESUS TAUGHT THE MORAL RELATION
BETWEEN WORDS AND DEEDS
By A. W. Tozer
The former treatise have I made, 0 Theophilus,
of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until
the day in which He was taken up. . . . Acts 1:1, 2
I am afraid we modern Christians are long on talk and
short on conduct. We use the language of power but our
deeds are the deeds of weakness.
Our Lord and His apostles were long on deeds. The
gospels depict a Man walking in power, "who went
about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of
the devil; for God was with him."
The moral relationship between words and deeds
appears quite plainly in the life and teachings of Christ.
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ placed doing
before teaching: "Whosoever therefore shall break one
of these least commandments, and shall teach men so,
he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but
whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven". Matt. 5:19
Since in one of its aspects religion contemplates the
invisible, it is easy to understand how it can be errone-
ously made to contemplate the unreal. The praying man
talks of that which he does not see, and fallen human
minds tend to assume that what cannot be seen is not of
any great importance and probably not even real, if the
truth were known.
So religion is disengaged from practical life and retired
to the airy region of fancy where dwell the sweet insub-
stantial nothings which everyone knows do not exist,
but which they nevertheless lack the courage to
repudiate publicly.
I could wish that this were true only of pagan
religions; but candor dictates that I admit it to be true
also of much that passes for evangelical Christianity .
Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.