Deuteronomy 24:10-13

Deuteronomy 24:10-13

"When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. 11 You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. 12 And if he is a poor man, you shall not sleep in his pledge. 13 You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you. And it shall be righteousness for you before the LORD your God.

Compassion "shall be righteousness for you before the LORD your God."  Does Moses preach a works righteousness.  Many have thought so; some still do.  I think there are reasons not to suspect legalism in this verse: I will give two NT arguments why not.

 

1.  Paul understood that he had a righteousness before He submitted to Christ as his Lord (i.e. became a Christian).

 

Philippians 3:7-11

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith- 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

There is a 'righteousness' that comes from the Law.  This righteousness Moses speaks of is a real thing: it is not a saving righteousness; but it is a righteousness nonetheless.  Would you rather live next to someone who is in this way 'righteous' or next to a sociopath?

 

As Christians we must not stop there.  Nor can we be willing that our neighbors stop there either.  (Lord how hard it is to bring salvation to 'good' people!  We cannot; but thanks be to God that what is impossible for man is possible for God!)

 

However, and this I think is the real point of the verse, there is another way to look at this using a NT example:

 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends."

Many (certainly I was one of these at one time) look at these verses and think, "O, I get it, I just have to go through my day being patient and kind and not envy or boast and when I get good enough at that then I'll be a loving person."  But this is not what Paul is saying at all.  Read it again.  What he is saying is that love is patient and kind etc.  Love is these things; so when you are patient with your co-worker or your children (or, better, yourself...but that may be revealing too much about my own personality) then you are loving.  You are loving your neighbor when you are not envious of his possessions.

 

Wow, for me this insight came as a wonderfully freeing thought for me.  Praise Jesus.  I suddenly realized that much of my own works righteousness bent was instantly evaporated.  Now I could be free to love even my enemy by relating to him or her with compassion.  This is exactly what Moses was talking about.  When you give your poor neighbor compassion by allowing him to stay warm even though he borrowed something from you the you are acting righteously.  Which is of course what God demands: a righteousness that comes from a heart of compassion (of course this could be done with an impure heart that would invalidate any true righteousness and leave only the first category of righteousness we talked about that cannot save!).  But, I believe, that when you do this kind of thing over and over again, so often that you do it automatically (so that your right hand does not know what your left is doing) praying for a right heart (create in me a pure heart oh God) then God is being faithful to complete the work in you for the day of Christ Jesus.

 

Praise You Father for giving me a standard of righteousness.

Praise You Son for completing that standard of righteousness for me.

Praise you Spirit for working in me so that I am becoming more and more like the Son in that righteousness.

 

Loving together with you,

Pastor Greg