[AI translation] Two, short, one-syllable words, but sharp as a dissecting knife and penetrating as an X-ray. It cuts to the heart of everyday life, revealing the most hidden, the most secret troubles. To steal: means to harm someone, to unlawfully touch someone else's property, whether private or community property. Anyone who does this is a thief, and the word thief is not a word we like to hear about ourselves. We are instinctively wary of a sin that is stigmatised by public opinion, if only by one word: thief! But this commandment, that is, this Word of God, also puts the stamp of thief on those whom public opinion has lifted up from beneath it, because wherever the light and the edge of this Word penetrates, it is revealed that it is not only theft if someone breaks into a place and takes away the valuables he has found, putting them in a bag. It is not only theft that the newspapers are constantly warning working society against, that makes them search the factory gates to see if they have taken a stick of salami or a wrench. There are many clever, impunity-less, even socially accepted ways of harming others, of taking community or private property without right, and these are covered by this word of God: "Thou shalt not steal" (Exodus 20:15).Let me give you a few concrete cases that may make the point clearer than explaining it with arguments.I heard from a college librarian that when a professor at the college dies, the library clerk immediately appears at the deceased professor's apartment, goes through his private library and sorts out the items that the professor took out of the library and forgot to return. This is not theft with premeditation, but it is theft nonetheless, and damage to community property.
One might say: it is not theft! Well, whatever the human public labels such trifles, I know that God wants to cleanse all sin from the lives of His own. When He says, "Thou shalt not steal", only you know whether this Word is not also revealing something in you somewhere in the depths of your memory, a book, a borrowed ten forints, a kitchen pan or something else that you have left behind by chance and which has not yet been returned to its rightful owner!
Another example. Someone called me on the phone the other day to tell me a story about something that happened to him, and when we finished talking he said: I'll call you again tomorrow and we'll have a little chat. I asked him if he was on holiday? 'No,' he said, 'the company pays the phone bill in a lump sum anyway, and everyone does their private calls there. One could argue here whether this is stealing or not, but one thing is certain: if the employees of that plant and other similar plants and offices took the message 'Don't steal' more seriously, there would certainly be less congestion on the telephone network in Budapest!
Or another example: someone witnessed a conversation at a construction site between an older labourer and a newer labourer. The older one was instructing the newcomer: 'Don't be silly, don't work your brains out, it's important to be seen moving all the time, whether you're cleaning the shovel or blowing your nose, the important thing is to pretend you're working! Again, we could argue about whether or not the work is paid enough, whether the other person is doing the same, etc., but one thing is for sure: where someone takes God's Word "Thou shalt not steal" more seriously, the work ethic will improve!
It happened back in my student days: A revival movement in Sweden at that time held a few weeks of evangelism. Many people came to know the blessed reality of salvation, Jesus Christ, the liberating power of forgiveness of sins. Many were converted. And in the week after the evangelisation, the amount of the income tax return in Sweden doubled. A lot of hidden income has been exposed by this Word of God: 'Thou shalt not steal'. Surely it would have the same effect today, if the edge of the Word were to enter our lives!
Let me tell you one more case: once a woman came to her pastor and complained how alone she was and how people were turning away from her. Why don't people love me?" she asked, sighing. The pastor already knew the woman a little and said: 'It's because you are such a poor woman that you have nothing to give to people. "Of course I am," replied the woman, "I am well off, no one goes away empty-handed when he asks me for anything, and no one can call me a miser. 'That may be so,' replied the pastor, 'but I am poor in other things: poor in faith and joy. So poor that not only can he not give to others, but he takes from them what little they have. Yes: people need, oh, so much, faith to live, they need to believe in life, in the meaning of life, to believe in each other, in themselves, to believe in God. And they need joy, like a flower needs a sunbeam, like a ripening ear of corn needs a sunbeam. They are unconsciously attracted to those who can help them in this, and those who steal even what little faith and joy they still have: they also unconsciously avoid them. The man who complains all the time, the pessimistic man, the moody man, deprives people of something, makes them poorer than they could have been with him. He deprives them of what little they have. Isn't that stealing?
'Thou shalt not steal', says the Word of God, and its light shines on one face after another, who have been made poorer in faith, in joy, in hope, in purity, in honesty, by a word of mine, or by an example of mine, or by an action of mine. But the Word goes even deeper: imagine if the person who invented penicillin, for example, had kept it to himself, had not made his invention public: would he have stolen from all mankind? Anyone who has something very good and useful, something that could be a blessing to everyone, and does not pass it on: he steals, he steals from people! That is why the apostle Paul says that he feels indebted to everyone, he feels as if he were under obligation to others, because he knows the highest good and is bound by it. You are indebted not only to the ten forints you have borrowed and not yet given, but to the love, the forgiveness of sins you have received from the Lord and have not passed on to others. We must not only believe that we are forgiven by God, but we must also continue to be forgiven. Not only must we believe God's love for us, but we must continue to do the same for others.
The fruit tree and the vine, to which Jesus compares the believer in Him, does not produce fruit for itself, but for the world outside the garden, and it does not distribute its own fruit, portioning it out to whomever it will, but the gardener will use that fruit where it will. We, believers in Christ: we owe to this world the fruits of the Spirit of God, love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, temperance. You are indebted, you are obliged to people, it means: feel as if people - your wife, your child, your unknown fellow human being on the street - look into your eyes and want to know what you have brought them from Jesus, the One you spoke to in your prayer this morning?
"Do not steal!" Not only can you harm another person by taking from them what is theirs, but also by not giving them what you owe them! What you owe!
And here we come to the basic grand theft! The fundamental sin of all thievery: the theft of God! For it is not, as they say, that all theft starts small, by first stealing sugar cubes from the holder, then pocket money from mum's purse, and finally embezzling from the public purse. It happens. But in fact, all theft begins with a big one, a very big one, with a big initial theft: stealing from God. For the Bible says that all property: gold, silver, valuables, talents, even the earth itself and its inhabitants, belongs to God! Theft from God happens every time we forget that what we have is not ours, it is deposited with us as a mandate, for a posteriori accounting. God has given us what is His and He will hold us accountable for what He has given us. We are not owners, but fiefs, trustees, tenants.
Is it not characteristic of us that, because we have abused the goods entrusted to us by God, the word 'possession' has become so disreputable among us? Possess: it means to possess, to sit on, like a hen of the chaff, and to guard, to possess. So we sit and cluck over what is ours. We forget that God is the owner! This commandment, "Thou shalt not steal", does not protect the property of others against me, but puts my property in a different light, that which I say is mine! There is much that I say is mine. It can be a house, a book, time, money, family, strength, talent, all of it in general: mine. And God says in His Word, "Thou shalt not steal". Then all at once it becomes a question of everything that is mine, is it really mine? Surely not! It belongs to God! I just keep forgetting that. It's just that we always have to be reminded of it again!
We've known that for a long time, we just... But then again: we steal! We steal what belongs to God! I'm not even mine! It's not true that I'm my own man! Because I, too, and I, too, belong to God! It is a lie and a mistake to say that my life, my time, my talent is in my hands. Well, to live in this lie, this mistake: this is theft, this is stealing from God! All theft begins by not giving to God what belongs to God! What I owe God!
Let me illustrate this with just two practical examples of what it means to steal from God. An ancient biblical principle says that ten percent of all a believer's income belongs to God! My dear thieving brothers and sisters, can you tell me, can you calculate how much the amount of money we have stolen from God according to this measure has already multiplied? When people lost their entire fortunes in World War II and afterwards, I have often thought that if God were to recover what we owe Him, it would not be possible to pay our debt at the cost of even greater material damage! Are we not in debt to Him on this single point?
The other example also paints a very depressing picture. How can I give to God what belongs to God in practice? Well: in helping a fellow human being in need. Jesus said that whatever anyone did to one of the prisoners, the sick, the stranger, the hungry, the naked, the least of these, he did to Himself. To steal, first of all, not to touch someone's property with a grasping hand, but to steal: not to see Jesus in the man in need and not to give him what he owes to Jesus! The man in need, the man who is suffering, the man who needs help, the man who is waiting for love, is the man in whom I can actually meet Jesus Christ, or in whom I can actually go alongside Jesus Christ, in whom I can decide for or against Jesus Christ, not with fine, pious words, but with real actions! Do you understand now what it means to steal from God?
But then that is what we do all the time: we steal God all the time! Because then, in fact, there is no other way to live except by stealing from God! What does God say about this? Something quite wonderful and incredible. Behold: since He never gets what is His, what is due to Him, He turns the whole thing around: He gives us and He gives us the very thing that is least of all our due. We have not given Him that which is His, and God says, 'Then I will give them that which is mine. What they owe, and what they don't want to pay, I will pay for them. They will not give themselves, their heart to me: so I will give them my heart, myself, my life.
What God has done is the exact opposite of theft: "Who, when he was in the form of God, counted not himself a prey, that he should be equal with God, But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; And when he was found in the likeness of men, he humbled himself, being obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Phil 2:6-8) In Jesus God has given us all that is His: His grace, His purity, His goodness, His eternal life, His victory, His heavenly power, His divine nature. All this is made manifest on earth in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Whoever, by faith, receives and receives again and again what God gives in Jesus, can now also live for himself in such a way that he does not steal but gives, does not always take but sacrifices, because to believe in God's goodness, his love, his victory: it also means to continue to give it to others.
"Do not steal" - that is: give! Communicate what you have received! Give yourself and what you have to God, or practically: to the people around you, as a sacrifice.
To this we ask our Lord together:
Pour out your Holy Spirit upon us like the dew of dawn,
And give us on our heads the crown of glory from you,
That our sanctified lives, burnt for sacrifice.
On your altar burn, our King, our Master!
(Canto 229, verse 3)
Amen
Date: 29 June 1958.
Lesson
Fil 2,5-11