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.