You Get What You Give!!

Luke 6:38 says “38 Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”

Jesus was teaching the basic truths of life per His Word to His followers and this lesson on giving came right after verse 37 where it talks about not judging and you won’t be judged. These both speak to the lesson of reciprocation and the effects of doing something right. Thus, Judge and you will be judged – give and you will get!! To break this apart. means to take the first part of each verse and analyze them for just a bit.

Do not judge others……stop. That scripture doesn’t even need to have the second part (and you will not be judged) if you are pursuing Christ and His ways with a pure heart. If you don’t have a pure heart, you will need the second part of the verse. The AND in the middle ties it all together as one thought, but the AND is not even needed if the first part is done with a pure heart. You may ask “what do you mean a “pure heart?” Sometimes we read and follow Scripture with the attitude of just getting by. Oh, we wouldn’t admit it, but that is the case. We think “let me read something to be able to win with my point.” When in essence we have already “ruined” the purpose of the teaching itself. Remember it says “do not judge!” Nuff said!! Nuff said if you aren’t positioning yourself to overcome the conviction of judging. You might say and means these words “I won’t judge you again.”

But what happens if you do judge that person again? In comes the second part of the verse. You will be judged!! So the very thing you do to keep from dealing with the judgment has in turn judged you! In trying to win at every turn in our life we can literally rewrite scripture to make it work for us. The Pharisees and Sadducees were all about doing that and they were experts. Jesus called them white-washed tombs. How can that be since we are promised the abundant life in John 10:10. It could be that you are categorizing what you feel are marginal sins, like judging, and not doing things for the right reason. Which speaks to a heart problem. What I mean by that is you could have a disobedient heart that is built off of human reasoning, which is weak, and that reasoning has let you down in your walk with the Lord and you don’t know how to get out of it. Or it could mean you don’t really know Jesus at all and repentance and salvation have not occured in your life. This seems to be the problem with so many “churchified” Christians. Christians who never grew in their relationship with the Lord through His word and now they are making up their own life verses to go by. Those verses are relative to how they were raised as children; how they perceived their walk with the Lord by how their mother or father lived their faith, and also by how much of God’s Word they absorbed through Godly teaching. You may say “all of that for just a couple of verses?” Yes!! In the second part of verse 37 Jesus follows up with this “Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.”

Now everything is starting to make sense isn’t it? We have no right to judge, condemn, or keep from forgiving! We can do nothing out of selfish deceit and part of that selfishness if keeping a record of wrongs throughout our life. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13 about love by saying “It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. “ All of this comes back to one thing.. love. Earlier in that chapter Paul says something else about love. 1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. Paul was showing all of us that the heart has to be right in anything we say or do and that heart has to have love to do that.

So the “GIVE AND THE GET” of the whole thing is Love has to be the driving force behind it all. With the right heart we can even speak the truth in love as Paul said in Ephesians 4:15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. ˆThe kicker in that verse is the part where it says more and more like Christ. You can’t speak the truth without it being in love! I really don’t care who you are or your reasoning for it. You have to deny scripture to justify not speaking “in love.”

Give love and you will surely Get love back. Don’t condemn and you won’t be condemned. Give and it will be given back to you. Jesus shows us once again when the heart is right and when the heart is wrong. Time to do a heart check and see where we line up and then repent and change to God’s way of living.

The Pilgrimage continues…..

David Warren