Alistair Begg’s The Christian Manifesto reflects on the pithy glory of the Sermon on the Plain. This concise yet comprehensive book confronts us with the log in our own eye so that we might see our Lord clearly and live a life of radical difference for him.
When confronted with Jesus’s radical commands in the Sermon on the Plain, our immediate temptation is to minimise his words. However, per chapter one, minimising Jesus’ words eviscerate them of their truly radical nature:
The biggest reason for the ineffectiveness of contemporary Christianity is a failure to take seriously the radical difference that Jesus calls for as we follow him as King. The 21st-century Western evangelical church has too often given in to the temptation to soft-pedal Jesus’ words—to find caveats and loopholes in what he says—in order to offer the world something that sounds more palatable and less demanding (p. 15).
What does genuine Christian living look like in the 21st century, and how can we be motivated to live it?
Jesus’ sermon in Luke 6, widely known as the Sermon on the Plain, starts like this:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
It continues by laying out the Lord’s vision statement, a manifesto, which goes beyond politics, culture and personality to show what the life of a genuine, ordinary Christian should look like.
Radical Commands
The radical difference that Jesus calls for begins with a radical reversal of values. Begg summarises Jesus’ path to true happiness in chapter two: “it involves exalting what the world despises and rejecting what the world admires” (p. 18).The path that the world admires is the path of wealth and popularity. But this is the path of fools and the path of woe that leads to an eternity of insatiable hunger.
Readers are also confronted with the least palatable command from Jesus’ sermon: the statement, “love your enemies” (chapter 3). Begg doesn’t let Christians hide from the gravity of Jesus’ words. This book has led me to ask: do we exemplify the command to love our enemies? If we blessed our political enemies who curse us, how would the world change? If we pray for those who terrorise us, how might our hearts change?
If we chose to live this [command] out, it would cause a revolution in our culture. If we chose to live this out, it would show what our Father is like: merciful (p. 40-41)
Our Father’s love is different to human love. He loves the sinner, the ungodly, the enemy (Romans 5:8). God loves the unlovable. We love the loveable, those who do good to us, those who love us in return.
Misunderstanding the Golden Rule
The Golden Rule, to love your neighbour as yourself, is one of those glorious lines that has been co-opted into our society’s lexicon, and in the process has been drained of all its power. In chapter four, Begg points out that “those around us are very happy with the idea of loving others as we would like to be loved ourselves” (p. 46).
Begg misses the opportunity to highlight the world’s misunderstanding of the command on a more basic, literal level. An exegesis of the ‘golden rule’ in context (in Luke 6 Jesus taught his disciples to bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek to those who strike you, to give your shirt to the one who took your coat) reveals that the ‘others’ are not just simply ‘others’ I like. ‘Others’ refers even to our ‘enemies.’ Our society falls into the same minimising tendency as the lawyer in Luke 10:29, narrowing the definition of ‘neighbour’ to only good people, or those like us. But Jesus, through the Parable of the Good Samaritan, expands his definition of ‘neighbour’ to even a Samaritan, a perceived enemy of God’s people.
The Strength to Love
How is it possible to love even our enemies? The best part of The Christian Manifesto is that Begg clarifies that the right way to take this command is “not simply to go on and get on obeying it.” This approach would reduce the command to crushing legalism. What is the right way to take the command?
It is to reflect on God’s mercy to you so that you are renewed and transformed in your mind (Romans 12:1-2), so that you want to love others because you love the God who so loves you. It is to appreciate that to live this way is to bear the family likeness, to be “merciful as your Father is merciful” (chapter 5, p. 39).
To live like this, to love like this, is to obtain the greatest reward, which is knowing we are his, because likeness testifies to the truth that we are sons of the Most High (Luke 6:35).
In the last three chapters (6-8), Begg helps us evaluate ourselves. I was inspired to become known for one thing: forgiveness, which is the ultimate manifestation of love for enemies. He doesn’t leave us burdened with the radical weight of our Lord’s commands, however. He ends by reminding us of who our Lord is:
Faith is coming to him, as it were, not with full hands and on our feet but with empty hands and on our knees, confident not in who we are but in who he is (p. 98).
God is full of compassion and mercy. This book emptied my hands and brought me to my knees. I think that anyone who reads this book will be deeply impacted to live a life of radical difference.
