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Monday, September 12, 2011

The 11th Commandment

I recently read a story from Spurgeon in which a preacher dressed as a poor person seeking lodging at the home of a man who had a reputation for holiness and godliness in order to test this man’s integrity.  In the process of this masquerade, his wife, in her husbands absence, had devotions from the catechism with the family, servants and guests.  She asked the masquerader how many commandments there were, and he answered 11!  She lamented that a “man of his age” did not know the number of commandments.

The preacher found that all that was said of this man was true, and later during a worship service where this family was attending, he preached on the 11th Commandment from the text of John 13:30, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”

The humbled woman remarked that from then on when they were asked how many commandments there were the answer would now be 11!

Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), co-founder of L’Abri Fellowship, with his wife, sees this commandment to love as a summation of the commandments.  In the first chapter of his book, True Spirituality, Schaeffer lays out the fundamental principle that if we break the command to love, we break the first commandment to love God, and we show that we do not love our neighbor as our self.

He gives us two practical tests to help us measure our inward spirituality: one, do we covet?  Two, do we envy? If we seek contentment, says Schaeffer, then we will be putting covetousness and envy out of our practice.  “When we. . .understand that failure in these areas is really coveting, a lack of love, every one of us must be upon his knees as Paul was upon his knees when he saw the commandment not to covet; it destroys any superficial view of the Christian life.”

I hope that your appetite for this book is wetted to read more about the “positive inward reality” of the walk with Christ should be.

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