Vol.12 No.4

Two-Table Nice
Balanced people emphasize both parts of God’s law—love to God and love to others.
By C. Mervyn Maxwell

Have you ever met a religious grouch? Someone obsessed with the dos and don’ts of his or her religion yet wholly lacking in courtesy? Some people who pride themselves on being very religious are rude and discourteous. Others who aren’t religious pride themselves on being polite and honest. Neither is better than the other.

But when was the last time you met someone who was both religious and polite? Or even thought of God that way?

The most balanced person in the world!

In the life of Christ, we find the balance of what I call being “two-table nice.”

This means adhering to both tables (stone tablets) of the moral Law—the first four Commandments about obeying God and the last six Commandments about how to treat people. Jesus summarized the two divisions as two core commandments when He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40.

Jesus was both courteous and  religious. He was “two-table nice.” He honored both tables of the law—the one about loving God with our heart, soul, and strength, and also the one about loving our neighbors as ourselves.

While Jesus was nice, He wasn’t wimpy nice. His was niceness with guts. He had the gift of constructive confrontation. One night He dared tell an important man like Nicodemus that even he needed to be born again! He said it in such a way that Nicodemus came to love Him for it. Another time, Jesus had the honest courage to tell a group of leading ministers, to their faces in public, that they were hypocrites. But He told them with the voice of a man who was offering to be executed in their place before the week was out.

Jesus did niceness. He spent time with people, traveled distances to help them, and went without things so He could be generous. Instead of getting cross with awkward people, He was patient and encouraged them.

Jesus was polite, courteous, and thoughtful. He was kind. Completely honest. Prompt to do the right thing. Unafraid to stand up for others. Absolutely fair. At the same time, He was a true Sabbathkeeper, for He was two-table nice.

Because God teaches us to love one another, Christ’s total loyalty to His heavenly Father made Him completely unselfish. He was two-table nice. Good and nice. Even the onlooking angels, accustomed to being good and nice for thousands of years, were astonished at Christ’s supernatural goodness and niceness.

People shouldn’t claim to be Christ’s followers unless they are both courteous and religious—two-table nice—like Christ was. Jesus is waiting with longing desire for the reproduction of this balance in His church. Until Christians reveal His character, how can the world really know that Christ’s claims are true? In the meantime, Christ’s enemy, the devil, doesn’t mind which table of the law Christians emphasize, provided they neglect the other one. He knows that until Christians are both courteous and religious, any claim they make about Christ and His truth will fall on deaf ears.

Becoming a Balanced Person

If you are a Christian, please don’t cheat yourself by saying you can’t have Christ’s balanced character in your life. Christ’s character qualifications are listed as the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22, 23. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance.”

These characteristics develop in people who are born again or born “of the Spirit.” John 3:5. People who are born of the Spirit experience not merely an improvement on their old ways, marvelous as that would be, but also a transformation of nature. Romans 12:2. “The Christian’s life is not a modification or improvement of the old, but a transformation of nature. There is a death to self and sin, and a new life altogether. This change can be brought about only by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit.”(White, Ellen G., The Desire of Ages, p. 172)

You were born with a sinful nature. You know this. Now please don’t hang on to your sinful nature as if you were proud of it. Get a new nature. Get born from above, born of the Holy Spirit, who is as divine as God Himself. Become a partaker of the divine nature.

When you and I are treating people wrong, it does little good to pray that we won’t get irritated with them anymore or say mean things. What we need is to choose, by God’s grace, to have an entirely new attitude toward the people.

We need a new birth on this point, a transformation of nature. When we find that we are selfishly indulging ourselves, it does only a little good to pray for self-control. What we need is, by God’s grace, to receive an entirely new attitude toward our idol. We need a new birth on this point, a transformation of nature. If the Sabbath seems inconvenient or too long or dull, let us go to God and ask for a new attitude, a new birth in respect to Sabbathkeeping, and a transformation of nature.

In the final analysis, choosing a new attitude by faith is the only way any of us can be among those triumphant saints who “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 14:12.

If you are longing to be a better person, you may ask God for a special gift to aid you in your desire—His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to us as the principal divine Agent in the process of sanctification, the process of becoming Christlike, of becoming nice, with guts.

Christ is waiting with longing desire for the reproduction of Himself in His church. Don’t say He will have to wait forever! I know better. 1 John 3:2 says, “… it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” It’s a Bible promise.

I want to be like Jesus, don’t you? I want to help demonstrate in my life that Christ’s claims are true. I want to show others that religious people can also be nice people!

* Dr. C. Mervyn Maxwell (1925-1999) was a pastor, author, and editor. He served as a seminary professor at Andrews University in MI. Material adapted from his last book, Magnificent Disappointment, pp. 151-158. Used by permission.