Two passages of Scripture, one from I John 3 and the other from Genesis 38, emphasize our responsibility to care for one another.
By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: any one who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one, and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. Do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates you. I John 3:10–13.
This passage points out the contrast between the children of God and the children of the devil, using Abel and Cain as an illustration. Satan is a murderer, and he was concerned about introducing the sin of murder into the world after the fall. When Cain killed his brother and God asked him, “Where is your brother?” Cain replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” People have not realized that this is the attitude Satan wants us to have, but it is the exact opposite of what God desires. God is determined to bring us to the place where we have a conscience before Him about our brother or sister, that we realize we are our brother’s keeper and we are to prefer him above ourselves.
In this hour, when the sheep and the goats are being gathered, the basis of judgment is this: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Matthew 25:40b. God is more concerned about our responsibility to our brother or sister than about our responsibility to ourselves. He will judge more harshly the sins against the brethren than He will our own sins against ourselves. God is bringing us to love one another.
I John emphasizes our need to love one another. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Every one who hates his brother is a murderer (hatred becomes murder—if a person hates his brother in the Lord, he is a murderer); and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
But whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We shall know by this that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before Him, in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. I John 3:14–23.
A unity is coming to the Body of Christ, in which people will lay down their lives for the brethren. The unity of the Body is based upon loving our brother and carrying a responsibility for him. It is not that we decide to be agreeable. We go beyond that until our concern for our brother becomes greater than our concern for ourselves.
The story of Tamar, in Genesis 38, shows us the need of being responsible for one another. Matthew 1:1–3b gives us an introduction to that story. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. To Abraham was born Isaac; and to Isaac, Jacob; and to Jacob, Judah and his brothers; and to Judah were born Perez and Zerah by Tamar.
Tamar is the first woman named in the New Testament. She was a young widow who had survived two husbands. She put on the garb of a harlot and seduced Judah, her father-in-law. While she was disguised with the harlot’s veil, she took as his pledge for payment his signet ring, his cord, and his staff. He was to redeem them by a kid from the flock, which was her price. When he sent the kid, she was not to be found. Three months later he discovered that Tamar, his daughter-in-law, was with child, and he determined to have her burned alive. She revealed the things he had pledged, saying, “By the man whose these are, I am with child.” Then Judah realized that she had been more righteous than he, because as a widow, she was entitled to marry, in turn, the brothers of her dead husband. This ensured the succession of the family line. However, Judah had not taken his responsibility to see that this was done.
Instead of social security, pensions, and the organizations of relief which we have in modern society, the Israelite family took care of its own. A man who had died could have children raised for him so that his estate could continue. This was necessary in Israel because property passed down through the families. If the family line ended without an heir, the brother of the dead man became the husband of the widow, and their children were considered the seed of the brother who had died. Tamar became one of the women in the ancestral line of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the third verse of Matthew, at the beginning of the New Testament, Tamar is named as the first woman in the family line of Christ.
In Genesis 38:6–10 we first read about Tamar: Now Judah took a wife for Er his first-born, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s first-born, was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord took his life. Then Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform your duty as a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.” And Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so it came about that when he went in to his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on the ground, in order not to give offspring to his brother. But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord; so He took his life also. Because he refused to give service for his brother, he was slain.
Consider this carefully, and you will be aware of a deep spiritual truth. That which is born of God in this day does not come forth by the will of man or the will of flesh, but by the will of God (John 1:13). I Peter 1:23 says that we are “born of the incorruptible seed through the Word of God which lives and abides forever.” The New Testament speaks of various people who were begotten in the Lord. Paul said of Onesimus, “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds” (Philemon 10). The spiritual fathers often referred to their spiritual sons who had come forth through the incorruptible seed of the Word of God that they had preached and ministered.
We are chosen by God to be co-creators with Him in bringing forth the sons that He wants. If we violate that, we become murderers. We must not turn aside from the Word or draw back from the responsibility that we have to bring forth the will of God in our brothers’ lives by the Word which God has given to them. If you hate your brother, you are a murderer, even if you have done him no physical harm. Without your faith and the Word of God that comes from you, he cannot come forth in the Spirit to be what God wants him to be.
Something has been created within you. Something of God has been born within your life. Yet your relationship to God, and a great deal of what you walk in, did not come directly from God. Rather, it came through a human channel. Someone in the Body of Christ, perhaps an elder or a minister, was responsible for much of it.
Someone ministered a living Word, an incorruptible seed that began to grow within your heart. Something divine and holy of God came forth that had not been there before. It was created and it began to grow. It was nourished and cherished. You actually became God’s field in which the seed was planted and watered and cared for. The plot was weeded carefully so that thorns and weeds would not choke it out. Today you are becoming the harvest unto the Lord. Fruit is coming forth in your life which would never be there if some individual had not been faithful. If he had not done it, would he not be guilty of the highest form of murder? If he had refused to be a channel and a co-creator with God, he would have destroyed what God had purposed to bring forth.
You are to be a part of the ministry of divine life and creativity as God brings forth His will in people’s lives—as Christ actually brings forth Himself in people’s lives. God has chosen that this ministry should come forth through human channels.
Only four women are named in the genealogy of Jesus Christ: Tamar, Rahab (the harlot), Ruth (the Moabitess), and Mary (the mother of the Lord). You can see how the plan of God was almost frustrated because of the wickedness of Er and the selfishness of Onan, and so God slew them both.
If you hate your brother, death is abiding in you. If you are not concerned about your brother, it is a death-dealing matter. You will realize this much more in the days to come. It is very important that you read again about the responsibilities you have for others. In Old Testament times, a man more or less answered to God for the things that he did or did not do. In the New Testament, brotherly love began to prevail. But as we come to the days of the Kingdom, the standards are changing. They are becoming much more critical and our relationships are becoming more important than before. This is happening because the great day of spirit is coming forth.
In the Old Testament, people paid their tithes; in the New Testament pattern, giving goes beyond tithing. Tithing is basic, but offerings go beyond that into sacrificial giving. Rarely do today’s Spirit-led believers stop with the tithe. They are moved to give to their brothers and sisters and to make sacrifices of a missionary nature. However, the approaching days of the Kingdom open up another aspect of giving. It is based upon a stewardship in which we sense that His is the Kingdom and the power and the glory. All things belong to Him, and at best we only become stewards and administrators of His estate. After we give the Lord ten percent, let us not hold back the rest as our own. Instead, we must recognize that it is all His, and so we ask Him to teach us how to be faithful stewards.
The preaching of tithing is necessary, but with it the stewardship of the Kingdom must also be preached because there is an overlapping of truths. We will not grasp the full measure of what God wants to reveal about giving, about finances, and about faithful stewardship, until we sense that a revolution is taking place. In a revolution, there must be a reform of the things that have been corrupted. In this revolution, we will return to a state of heart found in the book of Acts: no one called anything his own. Those early believers had all things in common (Acts 4:32).
This will become more clearly defined as the days of the Kingdom draw near. We will not only say, “This is not my own,” but we will lose the sense of selfishness and reach out in unselfishness to the Body. There must be a revolution in which the Lordship of Jesus Christ creates a system again, in which the Lord of lords owns everything that He lays in our hands. One of the parables of the Kingdom speaks of the stewards to whom their master entrusted talents and then called for an accounting (Matthew 25:14–30). The talents were theirs to use as stewards; and they had to be faithful and diligent with them, for they were being judged according to their faithfulness as stewards.
When only a few people control everything, a country can reach an impasse in the course of a few hundred years. Revolution often results when there is a need for land reform. For this reason, ancient Israel had a year of Jubilee every fifty years. If a few gained control of the land, it did not matter, because at the end of fifty years their tenure was over. At that time everyone returned to his inheritance—the land that had been allotted to his family at the original division of Canaan. He possessed it again. God set up this system as a way of preventing revolution.
If you travel through certain countries in this day, you will find an upper class and a lower class. Strangely enough, this system worked to some degree in the past. But now the Communists come in and make an issue of the oppressions of the poor for the purpose of revolution. Then they begin to destroy the middle class, and the Communist party becomes the ruling class. They rule over the poor with an even heavier hand than the former system did.
The capitalistic system, too, can create harassment and oppression. Unless there are governmental curbs and controls, a few corporations can create monopolies which are destructive to the freedom of the economy. We can rejoice because the Kingdom is coming, and the kingdoms of this earth will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11:15). All things are His. The Father laid everything into His hands. Private ownership of property will cease in the Kingdom. No man will claim ownership of anything; neither will property be controlled by communistic, socialistic, or capitalistic systems. Stewardship will become the basis of property control, and the blessing of the Lord will come upon those who are faithful. The Lord will bless and reward those who serve Him wholeheartedly, but everything still will be His. His is “the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever” (Matthew 6:13).
Believers who are reaching into the Kingdom recognize that they carry responsibility as stewards of the mysteries of God. Suppose God calls you to preach the Word. Perhaps you would choose to do it anyway; but if it is the commandment of the Lord, you have no choice in the matter. You no longer have any right to yourself. You are in the Kingdom, and you are His. Your money and your property are His. He directs the way that you will live. Hold the stewardship of the Kingdom as a very real responsibility. You cannot be selfish. Recognize that in the Kingdom, murder is defined as failing in your spirit to love your brother, failing to bring forth his best and to minister to his need. Selfishness has no place in God’s Kingdom.
These may seem like revolutionary ideas. Think about them, and you will realize that God plans to bring forth a Kingdom dedication in each member of the Body of Christ. Do not draw back from it and say that it is too much for you. Let each seek not his own, but another’s welfare (I Corinthians 10:24). The responsibility that you have in God is very positive. You have a responsibility to sow an incorruptible seed, to create God in your brother. You are not your own man. When you become a child of the Kingdom, your responsibility is to labor for the Kingdom. You cannot work for anything else when you become a bond servant of the Lord. You are His, and so everything that you are and everything that you have is His. Every capacity, every talent, every gift with which He endows you is His. And when you have done all, you are still an unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10).
Every one who hates his brother is a murderer. I John 3:15a. Do you understand this truth? It will set you on a new path of thinking. What can cause you to lose your walk with God? You will lose it if you try to retain the right to yourself, if you still think that the Lord’s dealings upon you are unfair. No chapter or verse in the Scriptures says that as a believer in Christ you have rights to yourself. However, the Word does say that you are not your own; you are bought with a price (I Corinthians 6:19–20). Stop grumbling and complaining and wondering about your rights. Begin to submit to Him and receive His bounty and His blessing.
Forget the idea that you must get ahead, that you must have your place and your ministry established, and that you have gifts which you must use. That attitude will cause your spiritual death. Are they your gifts? Is it your ministry? You cannot continue to think in the archaic terms of an age that is past. The days of the individual and of individuality are past; this is the day of His Body and the Kingdom.
True Body ministry must be restored first, because that is the only means by which you can leap into full Kingdom truths. If you think that Body ministry is teaching things which are difficult to receive, wait until you see the full measure of the principles of the King and what it means to be under Him. It means that He rules with a rod of iron. He does not use a rod of iron to beat you physically, but through the submission of your spirit, He controls everything that you will or will not enjoy.
The preaching of divine healing is now being minimized. We must still pray for the sick, but the emphasis should be upon the Lord possessing us and bringing forth divine health. In order to do that, He may constantly put us under His dealings. While we are under His dealings, we may feel that we are under attack, and ask for prayer. We may look for healings and deliverances, but the Lord is looking for a new creation to come forth. His emphasis is on what He is accomplishing. We may emphasize a healing, but our emphasis will change as we approach the Kingdom. The Lord emphasizes divine health, a divine nature, and our coming forth into all that He has for us. God wants to work in our lives, so that we become channels through whom He can move and operate in other people’s lives too.
A man sins greatly when he sins against his brother. Then he is sinning against the processes of the Body and the Kingdom that is coming forth. He becomes a murderer, one who is destroying what God is doing. Not only does he crucify Christ afresh within himself, but he does something even worse; he murders and aborts what God is doing as Christ comes forth in a brother. Such a one has no eternal life abiding in him.
The Lord is bringing His people to a new level of truth and dedication. When you become dedicated to the Kingdom, you lose everything. You strive, seeking first the Kingdom of God. After that, all the other things will be added to you. If you are having trouble with dedication on lower levels, what will you do about a higher level? Open your heart and say to the Lord, just as Mary said to the angel in the beginning of the gospel, “Be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). Ask the Lord to bring forth His Word in you, and He will. When the Lord gives you a Word about the baptism of fire, He immediately hands you a box of matches and tells you to strike them and see what happens. He gives you the initiative to say this much: “Lord, I am willing. Help me, Lord.” Do you want to stop right where you are? Do you want to go back to what you used to be? It is imperative that you go on into all that which God really has in mind. Pray about it and believe God with all of your heart.
Look again at the Sermon on the Mount and at all the parables of the Kingdom. The seals are coming off the Book, as Daniel prophesied. Many hidden truths are being revealed. The Kingdom is coming, like “a stone cut out of the mountain without hands” (Daniel 2:44–45). The Kingdom will smite and invade everything and bring it down. Lord, let it come!
We are not a majority and could never carry an election, but we do not have to. We are not satisfied with living in a democracy although it excels other existing governments; we want to live in the Kingdom. We do not need to be a majority; all we need to be is a minority of dedicated citizens of the Kingdom, because a few can prevail. Many kingdoms must be brought down, but let us begin with whatever is left of Babylon in our own hearts. Let us begin with the self that sits like an antichrist on the throne within the sanctuary of our hearts.
Lord, let Thy Kingdom come in the earth of our being, as it is in heaven. Let Thy will be done within us, Lord. Let us be submissive and absolutely Thine.