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 .

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     Yours in Christ,
    Paul N. F.