Charitableness - UPDV Updated Bible Version

Charitableness names a disposition rather than a transaction: the readiness to think well of one's neighbor, to bear with the weak, to cover a transgression in love, and to refuse the role of judge over a brother. Scripture pairs the duty with its negation, so the same passages illuminate both what charitableness commands and what it forbids. The thread runs from Solomon through the prophets and the Wisdom of Sirach into the Gospels and the apostolic letters, where love is named the bond of perfectness and the covering of a multitude of sins.

The Duty of Love

The proverb sets the keynote. "Hatred stirs up strifes; But love covers all transgressions" (Pr 10:12), and again, "He who covers a transgression seeks love; But he who harps on a matter separates best friends" (Pr 17:9). Peter takes the same image into the apostolic charge: "above all things being fervent in your⁺ love among yourselves; for love covers a multitude of sins" (1Pe 4:8).

The positive command runs through Paul. "Let all that you⁺ do be done in love" (1Co 16:14). "And above all these things [put on] love, which is the bond of perfectness" (Col 3:14). "But the end of the charge is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned" (1Ti 1:5). To Timothy, charitableness is a young man's credential: "Let no man despise your youth; but be an example to those who believe, in word, in manner of life, in love, in faith, in purity" (1Ti 4:12); and again, "follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2Ti 2:22).

The most extended treatment is 1Co 13. Love without which prophecy and faith and self-sacrifice are nothing — "Love suffers long, it is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not vaunt itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take account of evil; does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1Co 13:4-7). Of the three that abide, "the greatest of these is love" (1Co 13:13).

Bearing the Weak

Charitableness has a particular shape toward the weaker brother. "Now we who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves" (Ro 15:1). The whole of Romans 14 spells out what bearing means in a community whose members judge differently about food and days: "But him who is weak in faith receive to yourselves, [yet] not for decision of scruples" (Ro 14:1); "Don't let him who eats set at nothing him who does not eat; and don't let him who does not eat judge him who eats: for God has received him" (Ro 14:3). The reason for forbearance is the brother's standing before another Lord: "Who are you that judges the household slave of another? To his own lord he stands or falls. Yes, he will be made to stand; for the Lord has power to make him stand" (Ro 14:4). The conclusion is practical. "If because of meat your brother is grieved, you walk no longer in love" (Ro 14:15). "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor [to do anything] by which your brother stumbles" (Ro 14:21). Paul applies the same instinct to his own apostolic conduct: "Give no occasion of stumbling, either to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the church of God: even as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the [profit] of the many, that they may be saved" (1Co 10:32-33).

Restoration carries the same temper. "Brothers, even if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you⁺ who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; looking to yourself, lest you also be tempted" (Ga 6:1). And the church-wide rule, "and be⁺ kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you⁺" (Eph 4:32); "forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you⁺, so also [should] you⁺" (Col 3:13).

Forgiving the Erring Brother

The Lord's instruction is plain. "Take heed to yourselves: if your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day, and seven times turn again to you, saying, I repent; you will forgive him" (Lu 17:3-4). The Sermon on the Plain widens the same disposition into a single principle: "Be⁺ merciful, even as your⁺ Father is merciful" (Lu 6:36); "And do not judge, and you⁺ will not be judged: and do not condemn, and you⁺ will not be condemned: release, and you⁺ will be released" (Lu 6:37). The measure given becomes the measure received (Lu 6:38).

Peter draws this out into the way Christians answer wrong: "not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but on the contrary blessing; for hereunto were you⁺ called, that you⁺ should inherit a blessing" (1Pe 3:9). And James presses the warning that the unmerciful are unanswered: "For judgment [is] without mercy to him who has shown no mercy: mercy glories against judgment" (Jas 2:13).

Judgment Forbidden

Under the heading "Judgment Forbidden" stand the passages that strip the seat of judge from the disciple. Paul opens Romans with it: "Therefore you are without excuse, O man, whoever you are that judge: for in what you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge participate in the same things" (Ro 2:1). He returns to it in chapter 14 — "Who are you that judges the household slave of another?" (Ro 14:4) — and concludes, "Let us not therefore judge one another anymore: but judge⁺ this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother's way, or an occasion of falling" (Ro 14:13). To the Corinthians: "Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts; and then each will have his praise from God" (1Co 4:5).

James puts it sharpest: "Don't speak one against another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother, or judges his brother, speaks against the law, and judges the law: but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge" (Jas 4:11); "There is [only] one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy: but who are you that judge your fellow man?" (Jas 4:12). What is forbidden is not discernment — "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24) — but the appropriation of a seat that belongs to God alone.

Faultfinding

Under "Faultfinding" stands a sequence of episodes from the Gospels in which the religious establishment cannot abide the company Jesus keeps or the hand his disciples use. Of Jesus himself it is said before they have heard him: "And Nathaniel said to him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip says to him, Come and see" (John 1:46). When he claims to have come down from heaven, "the Jews therefore murmured concerning him" (John 6:41). When he forgives a paralytic, "Why does this man thus speak? He blasphemes. Who can forgive sins but one, God?" (Mark 2:7). When he eats with tax-collectors, "the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with the sinners and publicans, said to his disciples, [How is it] that he eats with publicans and sinners?" (Mark 2:16); "And both the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, This man receives sinners, and eats with them" (Lu 15:2); "And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner" (Lu 19:7). Even the unwashed hands of the disciples become a point of attack (Mark 7:2).

The same temper has its own portrait in the Pastoral Epistles. The faultfinder "is puffed up, knowing nothing, but doting about questionings and disputes of words, from which comes envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings" (1Ti 6:4). And Isaiah's vision of the day when "the terrible one is brought to nothing, and the scoffer ceases, and all those who watch for iniquity are cut off; who make man an offender in [his] cause, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate, and turn aside the just with a thing of nothing" (Isa 29:20-21), names the same disposition under judgment.

Charitableness Toward the Poor