LET EVERYONE OF US PLEASE HIS NEIGHBOUR

Our study of this divine command through the ministry of Paul will first show the great importance of reading scripture in its context. If we were to take this command in isolation, and only in the shortened form necessary for the title of this page, the strong believer would have to make constant concession to the scruples of the weak. The full command reads ‘Let everyone of us please his neighbour for his good to edification’, teaching us that forbearance with a weaker brother who has genuine difficulty with the principle of Christian liberty should be a temporary situation only. At the same time as the strong believers are curtailing their own liberty so as not to stumble him, they are teaching him and building him up on his most holy faith, cf. Jude 20, so that his time as a weak brother is short. Paul has already alluded to this: ‘Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another’, 14. 19.

So important is this matter of forbearance that Paul now cites the most noble and precious of examples, ‘For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me’. The significance of this quotation from Psalm 69 is to show that the whole life and ministry of the Saviour was characterized by a selfless attitude that was willing to bear unjustified reproach for the higher cause of pleasing the Father who had sent Him. Isaiah’s beautiful call to consider Christ shows us again the lovely spirit of gentleness and meekness that ever marked the Lord in the days of His flesh, ‘Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth … He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench’, Isa. 42. 1-3.

It is instinctive to us to protect what we think are our rights, and we resent any call to relinquish them. That was never true of the Saviour, and we who now have the mind of Christ should ‘Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus’, Phil. 2. 4-5.