JESUS TAUGHT THE MORAL RELATION BETWEEN WORDS AND DEEDS
“The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up….” (ACTS 1:1-2)
I am afraid we modern Christians are long on talk and short on conduct. We use the language of power but our deeds are the deeds of weakness.

Our Lord and His apostles were long on deeds. The gospels depict a Man walking in power, “who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.”

The moral relationship between words and deeds appears quite plainly in the life and teachings of Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ placed doing before teaching: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19).

Since in one of its aspects religion contemplates the invisible it is easy to understand how it can be erroneously made to contemplate the unreal. The praying man talks of that which he does not see, and fallen human minds tend to assume that what cannot be seen is not of any great importance and probably not even real, if the truth were known.

So religion is disengaged from practical life and retired to the airy region of fancy where dwell the sweet insubstantial nothings which everyone knows do not exist but which they nevertheless lack the courage to repudiate publicly.

I could wish that this were true only of pagan religions; but candor dictates that I admit it to be true also of much that passes for evangelical Christianity.

A. W. Tozer