As I Have I Give
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.
Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
While the beggar held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade.
Acts 3:1-11
The healing of the lame man is a very familiar incident in the New Testament; very suggestive in terms of our modern world, boiling as it is with change, restless and reaching for utopia. Here is a parable of humanity's helplessness and her willingness to settle for infinitely less than the best. Here is a lesson for the church, for Christians to be the redemptive force in history which Christ intended; not to concede to humanity's transient aspirations under the pressure of her lust for the temporal, her indifference to the eternal.
Here is a man, lame from birth (his problem was congenital),
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who was being carried, laid daily at the gate, totally helpless (he could not even help himself to a position where others could help him). "To ask alms"— what pathetic resignation is implicit in those three words: his highest hope was to be successful at begging! This is all he expected any longer from life—alms. Thank God there was infinitely more prepared for him; an answer which exceeded his wildest dreams; an answer he had long ceased to hope for.
There are three lessons of interest in this narrative. One, a major lesson to which we will give most of our space, and two minor lessons, not less important but minor in the sense that we will devote less space to them.
He Got What He Needed
The first lesson is this: This man, with a congenital problem, so completely helpless he could not even help himself to the place where others could help him, whose only hope in life was to succeed as a beggar, received an answer quite unexpectedly. He did not receive what he sought. He did receive what he needed—he got what he needed, not what he wanted! He had reconciled himself to a life of crawling
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and begging, dragging his useless limbs in the dust, vegetating. This is not uncommon in our modern world. There are millions in America who do not even entertain the possibility of serious change in their own lives or that of their posterity.
One of the most pitiful social tragedies today is human apathy; human nature reconciled to the status quo interminably. Human nature reconciled to vegetating; human nature satisfied with a handout; millions of Americans, as well as millions in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America who have no hope burning in their breasts. This is the inevitable result of a culture pervaded by secular humanism. There is nothing to reach for outside of history. There is no transcendent reality. Meaning and purpose can be found only within history—only within the here and now. The best humanity can hope for is only what it can do for itself—its own security. The physical is the ultimate concern and preoccupation.
Incidentally, in spite of the popular criticism of the church today with reference to some of our ponderous sociological problems, it has been the church in history that has moved humanity off the
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dead center of apathy again and again, and triggered the aspirations for freedom, justice and dignity in the human heart. It has not been politicians or industrialists; it has been the church of Jesus Christ. The church of Christ through her missionaries brought education, hospitalization and modern agriculture to Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Of the first 113 universities founded in the United States of America, 110 were established by Christians who dedicated those universities to the propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. The revolution in the world today was triggered by the missionaries of Jesus Christ, putting into human hearts aspirations that would be satisfied with nothing less than God's eternal answers.
But that is just the point: the danger is that humanity will settle for less than the best, material improvement rather than the healing of the nations, a sedative instead of a cure. The temptation is to work with the symptoms rather than the disease; to try to repair and improve the old decaying order rather than submit to God's perfect order. Humanity is inclined to settle for a few paltry coins of progress, when God wants to give us a shining new
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world of indescribable righteousness and justice and freedom. It is so easy for the church and for Christians to be enticed or cajoled by sentimentalism, or threatened and intimidated by intellectualism to give the coin of social reform rather than the gospel of healing through Jesus Christ our Lord. We capitulate so easily to the pride of men. We are so easily shamed by high-sounding sociological or humanitarian ideologies into offering something less than God's redemptive best to mankind. It is so difficult for us to say, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I unto thee." But we fail when we give alms only; we fail God, we fail man — even the one to whom we give alms only, and we fail ourselves.
Because humanity's problem is congenital — it is sin in the human heart — there is only one solution: the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son. This is why Paul could thunder, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16).
Helmut Thielicke, one of the most effective preachers of the gospel in Germany following World War II, wrote
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some of the most incisive books addressed to postwar Europe and the world. He recently published a book entitled, Encounter with Spurgeon. Spurgeon, the prince of preachers at the end of the nineteenth century—when preaching had lost its popularity, when modernism, naturalism and humanism had reached the zenith of their influence, when theology had been downgraded to sub-zero, when nobody took sermonizing seriously—was preaching to 6,000 people every Sunday morning in London. And every Monday morning his entire sermon was cabled to New York City and published in American newspapers. In the book, Encounter with Spurgeon, Thielicke wrote, "It was not the aim of his [i.e., Spurgeon's] preaching to show people that their life would be easier if they accepted the gospel; that it would solve their problems; that civilization would perish without Christianity; that the State and society need religion; that the Christian social ethic is absolutely indispensable; that the world order needs Christian foundations; that all the misery of modern man comes from secularism; that if our world is to endure there must be a renaissance of the Christian west . . . . All this is a kind of high-minded
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Christian pragmatism which we are all too prone to promote these days, and which frequently enough is smuggled into the Holy City of Ilium under the guise of a Trojan horse called Worldly Christianity. All this is completely alien to Spurgeon. He is concerned only with salvation. For us and our kind of Christian social ethic, the threatening danger is that we tend merely to explain the Christian ideas concerning the world order, the structuring of society, etc., and then to recommend them for their preservative and productive power. But since it is possible to have the Christian ideas without actually believing, and to be taken up with the social teachings of Christianity, without becoming engaged personally, these ideas lose their connection with the Lord of Christendom and degenerate into ideologies, namely into instrumentalities of power and world mastery. Thus it is possible for Christianity to become merely a pervasive atmosphere, a climate of social order, while faith dwindles away and the matter of salvation is forgotten. Therefore we stand in need of the simple way in which Spurgeon dares to say that what really and ultimately counts is to save sinners. Indeed what really counts is that we get to
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Heaven. Anything else is watered-down social gospel, twaddle—including all the talk about the Christian west."5
This is the central issue in the church today. Where can you hear the gospel of Jesus Christ that redeems mankind forever? The head of the board of Christian education of one great denomination said recently, "One of our problems is that we have many deliverers of good sermons, and few preachers of the gospel." In the final analysis, preaching of the gospel is what the church uniquely offers the world, and this is that which the world stands ultimately in need of. Let us not sacrifice the gospel for any other message however relevant and practical it may seem to be, for in so doing we are giving the crippled beggar a coin when we might raise him up to his feet to walk and leap and praise God!
Dr. Walter Judd on one occasion said that one of the things that troubled him and many of his colleagues in Congress was the fact that preachers, and church administrators, and Christians in general seem so anxious to get Congress to legislate a kind of righteousness which they are unable to produce in their own congregations. "We can pass laws, but it isn't
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going to change hearts," said a member of the Senate recently. "We can pass ten million laws, but we'll never change humanity until we find a power that works in the human heart." If ever the world has demonstrated the need for the gospel of Jesus Christ it is this very hour. If ever it was important for Christians to be faithful in propagating the gospel it is this hour!
You Must Have to Give
The last two lessons are so obvious they need only be stated. The first is, you must have — to give. "Such as I have, give I to you," Peter said. You cannot give what you do not have. The impotence of many Christians in this exciting, thrilling hour of history is due to the fact that they simply have nothing to offer but a few coins, and alms do not save a sick society. Salvation can only be shared by the person who possesses it. Do you have it? You can only give what you have and some of us are not giving because we do not have. I implore you to receive the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, the forgiveness and cleansing by His precious blood.
You Must Give to Have
The final lesson is equally plain. Not only must you have
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to give, you must give to have. One of the clearest lessons our Lord taught is that you cannot keep what you will not give away. He said it many different ways in clear, explicit language. "He that finds his life shall lose it; he that loses his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 10:39). In the parable of the talents He said concerning the one who had received one talent and buried it, "Take from him who has one talent and give it to him who has ten talents" because "he that has not from him shall be taken even that which he has" (Matthew 25:28-29).
In his first teaching of the Lord's Prayer, recorded in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6), Jesus lifted out of that prayer one petition, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" (v.112). One qualification Jesus laid down at the end of the prayer is that "if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (v.15). That is plain English!
Jesus said, "To whom much is given, much shall surely be required" (Luke 12:48). You cannot give what you do not have, and you cannot keep what you do not give! I will never forget one of the
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words of Dr. William Evans, great Bible expositor of another generation: "Do you honestly believe that you can get into heaven all alone?" If you have eternal life you had better share it.
Dr. Luke begins his historical record of the apostolic church with these words, "That which Jesus began both to do and teach . . ." He began them but He intends that the church, if it be His Church, continue what He began in the power of the same Spirit who enabled Him in His ministry. If you had been with Peter and John on your way to pray in the Temple that day, what would you have done? Would you have reached in your pocket, pulled out a few coins and flipped them to the beggar, then walked in pious grandeur to pray in the Temple? Or would you have dared to say, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I unto you; in the name of Jesus Christ stand up and walk"?
These are thrilling days in which to be alive and know Jesus Christ and His gospel. To have it and share it! If you do not have it, receive it now, and if you have it, bring glory to the name of God by sharing it.
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5. Helmut Thielicke, Encounter with Spurgeon (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975).
