So with all the Lord's disciples: their continual study should be to avoid that hypercritical disposition to sentence and to destroy other people, while desiring mercy for themselves. The rule which the Lord establishes is that we must expect from Him mercy only in proportion as we shall exercise this grace toward others. The fault-finding disposition that is ready to accuse and condemn everybody, indicates a wrong condition of heart, one against which all the Lord's people should be on guard. Mercy, goodness, love, are the elements of character which He desires to see in the spiritual Israelites, and without which we cannot long continue to be His children.
Like John and James many of the Lord's people, when indignity is offered the Lord and His cause, have felt like calling down destruction from God upon the wrongdoers. They did not realize the disharmony between such conduct and their service of the Gospel. It is for the servants of the Truth to remember that as Christians it is for them to seek, by sacrificing themselves for the world, to save the world from the death state and the dying process. Hence they cannot nullify the purpose of their consecration by desiring to wreak vengeance upon their enemies in any sense of the word.
Deut. 32:35; Matt. 1:21; 5:44; 18:11; 20:28; Mark 10:45; Rom. 12:17, 19; 1 Thes. 5:15; 1 Pet. 2:23; 3:9; Luke 19:10; John 3:15-17; 10:10; 12:47; Rom. 3:21-27; 4:24, 25; 5:6-11; 12:19-21; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Heb. 10:30.
