PART 9 - OUGHTS AND SHOULDS
Did you find difficulty with the idea that you are to, that you must, somehow, love God more than you love anything else, even yourself? Maybe you were completely honest and simply said, “It’s impossible!” Even if it would be good to supremely love the God most supremely worth seeking, who could do it? Who could possibly just generate, just do, such a love? Crazy talk!
Sometimes we’ll find that Jesus says something so all-encompassing, so heavy, that it sort of silences us:
“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” -Jesus
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” -Jesus
“If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” -Jesus
Even if we are convinced that these things are right and true, what can we help but feel when we consider that we must be perfect, as perfect as God? Jesus is declaring the standards of holiness and righteousness, and that these standards apply to the uttermost degree. Be perfect. Deny yourself, your “own” life. Can you achieve this standard? Can you hit this mark? Or maybe you still say, “It’s impossible!” In a very real sense, it actually is impossible. Jesus commands what it is impossible for us to do on our own.
“Apart from Me you can do nothing.” -Jesus
Jesus is trying to help us see that the absolute standards of goodness, truth, holiness and love, are beyond (so far beyond) our own moral abilities. We cannot live up to His standards. Do any of us even live up to our own standards? If I asked you to make a list of things you should and ought to be doing, but aren’t, would your list be empty? Are you doing all you ought?
This moral Should-Ought is everywhere, inescapable... You ought to have come forward. I ought to have helped out. There ought to be a law. You shouldn’t have taken my bicycle. We shouldn’t have laughed. It shouldn’t have happened. Religious or not, we all think like this; we all talk like this. Should and ought.
And Jesus is affirming, very strongly, this sense of should and ought, of right and wrong. In fact, He’s amplified it. Be perfect. Fulfill every ought. And it can’t just be for show on the outside:
“It was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” -Jesus
Refraining from actually having the affair doesn’t let you off the hook, if your heart desired it. Jesus seems to just see these spiritual truths. Can any of us give a reason why our own personal standards should be considered superior to His? How can choosing worse moral standards be better? It seems we are faced with meeting the highest standards of the highest good imaginable, that we really ought to be perfect. Does this make you feel like that tax collector?
“But the tax collector, unwilling to raise his eyes toward heaven, was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ This man went to his house justified. The one who humbles himself will be exalted.” -Jesus
If your heart cries out that the standard is too high, that perfection is simply and utterly impossible, but that it would be great (so great) if it weren’t impossible—Jesus has a promise for you:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” -Jesus
You do not need to think that you can, but to see that you cannot, and that if there’s going to be any supreme love for God in you, it’s not going to originate from you. Sleazy tax collectors, we all. But also exalted.