Third Series – Sermon Thirty-Five
Original by George MacDonald
Paraphrase by Dale R. Howie
The very idea of being unmasked, that is, of our innermost thoughts being revealed, is terrifying to most of us. In “The Final Unmasking,” MacDonald continues the discussion of righteousness. In “Righteousness,” he redefined it from our western traditions of legal rightness to the Biblical view of a relational one. He takes it out of contractual concepts and language to covenantal ones.
Here MacDonald asks the question, “Will all my weaknesses, evil habits, pettiness’s, and wrong thoughts I cannot help be revealed to all?” How this question strikes us tells us everything we need to know about who our God is. If our God is a judge, we will hide in the bushes as Adam and Eve did. If He is our Father, we will run into His arms and ask Him to expose us to His Light and liberate us from all that is not of love’s kind! If we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear.
Once again, I say, all judgments coming from the Father, Son, and Spirit are redemptive. They do not reveal anything except for our liberation. They do not reveal from any need for their own holiness, but for our freedom, joy, and Life! There is no freedom when our master is selfishness, no joy in taking, no life when we choose separation and division over oneness and union in a life of giving.
Heaven is and will be the condition of mind and heart in which we act and live as one common body. One being of infinite parts, sharing in the mutualism of our natural and divine love!
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It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
The Final Unmasking
Our Father is not a God that hides, but one that reveals. His whole work in relation to us is one of revelation. He shows us more of Himself so that we may know Him more, come nearer to Him, and walk more closely with Him. He is always revealing the truth, but if we are still in the dark about anything it is not because He hides it, but because we cannot see it yet.
It is not irreverent to say that God cannot do some things at once and must take time to do them. God cannot delay the implementation of His will forever. It is delayed for a time to work out a higher purpose in His plan. God has given us a real place in that plan and the ability to delay His purposes, so that in time He can work His way and achieve a more remarkable outcome in the end. Our Father sacrifices His sovereignty for us that we may become like Himself and give ourselves to the truth. He made us able to do wrong, that we may choose, and willingly love righteousness.
The fact that everything is slowly moving into the light, as far as it is possible, is revealed by the Lord in three different ways in the gospels. Jesus says in Luke 8:16 NAS, “Now no one lights a lamp and covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see the light.“ This passage speaks of the light as the duty of those who have received it to let it shine, for we have a part in revealing it. In Luke 12:2, he says that light will expose hypocrisy. In Matthew 10:25-26, He tells His disciples to be fearless in revealing the light in the face of opposition.
In all of His exhortations, Jesus reveals that the righteous and the unrighteous cannot hide anything, and everything will be revealed.
Beware, the Lord says, “for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed, neither hid, that shall not be known.” So, what is hypocrisy? The desire to look better than we are. That is the hiding of things you do that you are not supposed to do because you would be ashamed if they were known. The doing of them is bad enough, but hiding them to appear better than you are is worse still.
The one who does not live in a glass house is a hypocrite. So, most of us question whether we are becoming more or less hypocritical. Are we ashamed of not being more open and transparent? Are we fighting our temptation to hypocrisy?
Our Lord has no thoughts to be ashamed of before His Father and His universe and He will not be content until we live in the same liberty. He tells us, for our encouragement to fight on, that “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.” That we can become as righteous as the Father and Son can prod us to desire.
Jesus also said, “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.” (Matthew 10:25-26) To the one who loves righteousness and his brethren, it is always painful to be misunderstood. Misunderstanding is especially inevitable when you act upon principles beyond the recognition of those around you. Those who are but half-hearted Christians consider themselves the lawgivers of righteousness and command you with the very things you aim to destroy.
Jesus himself was accused of being a drunkard and a sinner and would probably be today as well by many calling themselves Christians. Those who are the teachers of temperance and virtue. Jesus lived on a higher plane than they understood. He acted from the height of virtue they could only speculate about but not live. His mountain tops were higher than they could climb. He put up with their evil words but was neither dismayed nor troubled by them. And from His life’s experience comforts those who must fare as He did. If they called Him the Devil, how much more us of His house. If they insulted the Master, how much more His servants! As long as people call themselves Christians on other grounds than that they are slaves of Christ, children of God, and dead to themselves, they will misuse despitefully the true servants of the Master. Do not hesitate to speak the truth, never mind what they call you, and proclaim the gospel without fear!
Jesus spoke these words to His first disciples, but they apply to all that obey Him. Few who have done their duty have not been annoyed, disappointed, and even perhaps enraged by the misunderstanding, antagonism, and false misrepresentations they have been subjected to. All of these are issuing from those benefiting from their efforts to be neighbors to all. The tales of heartlessness and ingratitude we encounter compel us to see more and more clearly that humanity, without determined effort after righteousness, is wicked enough to sink to any depth of disgrace. Also, the judgments coming from imagined superiority are hard to bear. The rich screwing his workmen for a penny while lecturing them on their generosity! He takes the beam out of his own eye to pick the mote from his brother’s!
In an attempt to live a more faithful life, the person who chooses to live differently than his neighbors, will have strange motives reasoned to account for it. It is a comfort to believe that the truth will one day be known of this honest soul. The presumption of guilt that he was and did as the dull-headed and dull-hearted reported of him. Still more satisfying will be the unveiling where he who was misunderstood by those who should have known better. Who, not even understanding the point, assume he was doing the wrong thing while crying for the courage to yield not to himself nor his friends, but only his Lord.
How many of us hear and accept the words, “Be not conformed to this world,” without once perceiving that what we call culture and bow to as supreme, is the “world” and nothing less. Or that those who care what people think and say of them have already been conformed. That they have already taken the shape of the world. The righteous one has nothing to do with culture as a judge or lawgiver. This one is free from the law of the world and under the direction of Jesus Christ.
Let us do right by our brothers and sisters and not be troubled about worthless opinions. The less you follow these voices, the easier it will be for you to love your neighbor. Let us comfort ourselves by the fact that the truth will win out. You will not pass into eternity with their judgment branded on you. You will be with your true peers and be judged by them.
Are you of those who look for the justification of the Light, preparing to encounter the exposure the unveiling will bring? Are you ready for the truth, whatever it may be? I ask, have you a conscience free of offense? Is your heart pure and clean, not fearing its exposure to men and angels? Concerning God, who knows it all now! My true question is, do you love the truth enough to welcome, or at least submit willingly to this exposure? The exposure of what may be yet unknown about yourself? That will rebound from your shame and humility to the glory of the truth?
It may be, for instance, that you were wrong about what you thought were wrongs against you, and now are waiting and desiring the judgment of God. Will you welcome any discovery, even if it works to excuse others by revealing in you what is false and making you more authentic? Are you willing to be happy that you were wrong when you thought others were? If we can face, with humility, the revelation of the hidden, then we are of the truth and need not be afraid. Because, whatever happens, it will make us faithful, humble, and pure.
Does the Lord mean that everything we have done or thought will be laid open to the universe?
Yes, I think as far as it is necessary that all be revealed to those who have known and cared about us and those who will know us in the future. They must know that he is a true man and transparent to all who encounter him. No one can be understood by everyone, but everything will be working towards revelation, not towards concealment and misunderstanding.
Who would, in this kingdom of light, desire concealment or misunderstanding? Concealment is darkness. Misunderstanding is its fog. Every person will hold their door open for all to come into their house, for it will be the temple of God, with nothing to hide and beautiful things to see. The glory of God’s world is there. Everyone’s light will shine for the good and glory of his neighbor.
Will all my weaknesses, evil habits, pettiness’s, and wrong thoughts I cannot help be revealed to all.
Yes, if they continue to constitute your character. That is, if these traits are you. But if you are fighting them, honestly trying to walk in the light, and have come out of the darkness, you can believe in your Father that what He is curing is cured, forgiven and seen no more. If indeed some things must be seen, only the truth of them will be seen. Seen as things you are fighting, not things you are cherishing and holding.
God will be fair with you! He will treat you with the fairness of a father who loves His own. Your Father will have you clean. He will not spare you any needful pain, nor expose you to any that is not needed. The things we have overcome are dead and forgotten, or if remembered, your Father will be there to comfort you. “If any man sin, we have a comforter with the Father.” We can trust Him with our past as thoroughly as we do with our future. Nothing will hurt us as long as we do not try to hide them. So long as we are ready to confront them wholeheartedly as we should.
For to be divinely ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. This shame is for those who want to be free, not those who care only for appearances. This latter is for those who only want to pass the test, not those who want to get at the heart of things. In our Father’s name, let us move forward with nothing to be ashamed of and be ready to meet whatever confronts us. To be humbly repentant is to be plunged into the cleansing bath of the truth.
As to the ways of God’s revelation, I need not speak here. He has always, from the first, been revealing them. Revealing them to His prophets and children and will do so forever. But let me speak about another kind of revelation. That is one of exposing people’s evil as evil!
The most terrible revelation is that of a man of himself. What a horror it will be to an evil one which has enhanced his pleasure by the suffering of others. One who knew himself to be disgusting to those with morals but gained no insights into himself. What a horror it will be when his eyes are opened, and he sees himself as God sees him! Imagine awakening all at once to see the eyes of the universe fixed upon you in horrified astonishment, but also seeing yourself at the same time, as those eyes see you! What an awakening! Awakening into the full blaze of light and consciousness, of truth and evil!
Think what it will be for one counting themselves religious, orthodox, exemplary, to see suddenly there was no true religion of love in them, only love of self. No love of what is right, only a great love of being right! What a revelation to the one who was a hypocrite, who loved appearances but was not righteous!
The rich seem to be among those who will encounter the sharpest repudiation, if I correctly understand the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. One who has not realized the contempt in their unfairness to the poor, all the time counting themselves to be the very elect of God! What evil money and self-serving religion, with all of its self-sufficiency, generated between them, can make of us is appalling. Money, the most contemptible of all deities, is the most worshiped, both outside and inside the house of God. Many religious rich in the day of the unmasking, concerning their behavior to the poor to whom they thought themselves very kind, will be their greatest damning revelation.
Of all who will one day stand in dismay and sickness of heart and will fare the worst are those who have consciously failed their brothers. These will see that their very life was a sham. They, pretending friendship, have used their neighbors for their own ends and have divided them. To these, Dante gives the lowest hell. If there is one thing God hates, it must be treachery.
Do not imagine Judas to be the only one of whom the Lord will say, “Better were it for that man if he had never been born!” Was this said out of personal anger, or did He state a spiritual fact, a living principle? Did He speak in anger at the betrayal of His apostle to Himself? Or in pity for the one who would be better off unborn? Did He speak from some knowledge of a fearful punishment awaiting Judas or the sense of dishonor it was to be such a man? The greatest of all things to be pitied is to live with the awareness of being such a person. That is to know ourselves and not another as that treacherous one!
“O God,” we think, “how terrible if it were me!” How terrible would it be to become Judas! Have I not done things with the same seed of selfishness in them, the same origin, if brought to its evil perfection, would be this worm of treachery? Except I come to love my neighbor as myself, I too would one day betray Him! Therefore, let us be compassionate, humble, and live in hope for everyone!
A person may sink so incrementally and slowly that he is not aware that he is a devil. He can go on being a good churchman, a good dissenter, and believe himself to be a good Christian and continue repeating the same sins against his poor and evil conscious that must have a dreadful day of awakening. Some never awaken to know how wicked they are until the gaze of the multitude is upon them! The mob staring with self-righteous eyes, themselves also guilty but unaware. They are sinning perhaps after a different kind, therefore the hardest of judges, thinking by the condemnation of others to escape judgment themselves. But there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. What if the only thing that could awaken Judas, the money-loving thief, was the knowledge of himself by letting the treachery go to its end? The end with his kiss of betrayal to the Master? Judas did not hate the Master when he kissed him, but his very love of himself betrayed him by not being a true man!
The good man, aware of his own evil and desiring no refuge from the light, rejoices in the exposure of corruption as a victory of the truth for the kingdom of God and His Christ. He sees in the unmasking of the hypocrite that is the unveiling of the covered and the exposure of the hidden. Going between us and the lie, as God’s loving interference for him and all of his race.
The only victory the truth can ever have is its recognition in the heart of the liar. Its triumph in the one not content with saying, “I was blind and now I see,” instead crying out, “Lord God, just and true, let me perish, but let you endure forever! Let me live because you live, because you save me from myself, from the lie I have fed in myself and called righteousness! Hallowed be thy name, for you alone are true, lovely, holy, and humble! For you alone are unselfish and have never sought your own, but the needs of your children! Yes, O Father, be thou true, and every man a liar!”
There is no possiblity of satisfaction in revenge for the injured. The worst punishment inflicted on the evil-doer is to let him see his true nature. That nature that is of God, and the deepest truth of his being as divine. Neither can any other punishment than the sinner’s seeing the enormity of his injury satisfy the injured. No amount of suffering could satisfy them, or be satisfied by either revenge or justice. Both of these will continue to know themselves foiled so long as the wrongdoer will not admit he’s wrong and mocks at the idea of amends, by admitting no wrong, and is still rejoicing in his sin.
Therefore, while a satisfied justice is an unavoidable eternal event, an act of satisfying revenge is an eternal impossibility. The sinner’s vision of himself as the sole and adequate punishment begins to have its effect. At that moment, the sinner will begin to grow into a righteous man. At this point, the offended brother has no choice except to take the offender to his heart and become more tender toward him in doing so now that his brother is repentant. One who was dead and is now alive was lost and now found!
Behold, the meeting place of the divine extremes, the extreme judgment, and the glorious embrace of heaven! They run together. The wheel comes full circle. I venture to think, there can be no greater agony of soul, as to see oneself as vile, vile by our own choice and actions. Likewise, I think there can be no delight of the soul short of being one with God. That is, seeing the heaven of forgiveness open and disclosing the shining star that leads us to our own true home. The home where the Father has been all along awaiting His children’s return.
So friends, however angry we may be, however justly and intensely we feel our wrongs, there is no revenge possible in the universe of God. No matter how much I want justice from the one who harmed me today, the day will come when he sees himself as he is, and my heart will bury his sin.
Let us anticipate our forgiveness. Does anyone dare to think that Jesus would have us hate Judas through whom He went to the cross? Is Jesus pleased with how we, called by His name, have treated His nation? We have not yet sounded the depths of forgiveness that are and will be required of those who will be His disciples!
Our friends will know us then for their joy or sorrow? Will their hearts sink when they see who we are? Or will they rejoice to find we were not so much to blame as they thought, for the things that gave them troubles?
Let us understand that not only evil will be unveiled, but many veils will be removed that have been masking misconceptions. Their unveiling will reveal faces radiant with the loveliness of truth and whatever disappointments will come, there is consolation for every heart in the all-sufficient joy. These ones standing at the edge of the kingdom, are about to enter the ever expanding and full possession of the inheritance of the saints in light.
Those who love righteousness are both willing and desirous of standing naked before God and our brethren, as we are and where we are.
Our Father has chosen love and fatherhood over sovereignty towards us so that we might willingly become like Him. We were created with the possibility of doing wrong so that we might be real players in all aspects of our lives and relationships!
Those who have become good are the only ones who are good. There is no hiding from the truth of who and what we are! Make up your mind now and receive the redemptive judgment of God so that you have nothing to fear in the future.
Jesus willingly received the accusation that He was the devil. He cared nothing for the opinions of others.
Since we are known and loved by God as we are, are we willing to expose ourselves to the truth for our liberation?
Those who have become good are the only ones who are good. There is no hiding from the truth of who and what we are! Make up your mind now and receive the redemptive judgment of God so that you have nothing to fear in the f
Unmasking is only necessary if we need exposure to live transparently and in harmony in the open air of love in heaven.
The unmasking is for the freedom of God’s children. It is not to embarrass or punish but to deliver and comfort us in His cleansing bath of truth.
It is one thing to unmask the repentant. Quite another to unveil the evil ones who thought themselves above all this. The religious in whom there was no love of others, only love of self! Those in whom there is no love of what is right, only a great love of being right!
These will fare the worst in failing to love their neighbors and seeing their lives revealed as a lie and a sham.
Treachery is to appear as the lover while seeking only your own self-interest. To claim to be on God’s side while working against Him for your own. It is not just Judas who betrayed the Lord! We seek heaven but care little for what He cares about. In the end, the judgment is that we loved ourselves, and this same love will betray us!
Judgment is not primarily about us being evil, but that we were made after the nature and being of God and betrayed the truth with our life of lies.
Justice is not found with us being right and others being wrong. Justice finds its home in the forgiveness and reconciliation of brothers and sisters being as one.
Unmasking is the introductory blog for this sermon.
LOVING RIGHTEOUSNESS
He gave man the power to thwart his will, that, by means of that same power, he might come at last to do his will in a higher kind and way than would otherwise have been possible to him. God sacrifices his will to man that man may become such as himself, and give all to the truth; he makes man able to do wrong, that he may choose and love righteousness.
BEING HYPOCRITES
What is hypocrisy? The desire to look better than you are; the hiding of things you do, because you would not be supposed to do them, because you would be ashamed to have them known where you are known. The doing of them is foul; the hiding of them, in order to appear better than you are, is fouler still.
BEING MISUNDERSTOOD
The Lord himself was accused of being a drunkard and a keeper of bad company—and perhaps would in the present day be so regarded by not a few calling themselves by his name, and teaching temperance and virtue. He lived upon a higher spiritual platform than they understand, acted from a height of the virtues they would inculcate, loftier than their eyes can scale.
How many hear and accept the words, ‘Be not conformed to this world,’ without once perceiving that what they call Society and bow to as supreme, is the World and nothing else, or that those who mind what people think, and what people will say, are conformed to—that is, take the shape of—the world. The true man feels he has nothing to do with Society as judge or lawgiver: he is under the law of Jesus Christ, and it sets him free from the law of the World.
What I mean to ask is, Do you so love the truth and the right, that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself—an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humble?
BEING UNMASKED
Who in the kingdom will desire concealment, or be willing to misunderstand? Concealment is darkness; misunderstanding is a fog. A man will hold the door open for anyone to walk into his house, for it is a temple of the living God—with some things worth looking at, and nothing to hide. The glory of the true world is, that there is nothing in it that needs to be covered, while ever and ever there will be things uncovered. Every man’s light will shine for the good and glory of his neighbour.
‘Will all my weaknesses, all my evil habits, all my pettinesses, all the wrong thoughts which I cannot help—will all be set out before the universe?’
Yes, if they so prevail as to constitute your character—that is, if they are you. But if you have come out of the darkness, if you are fighting it, if you are honestly trying to walk in the light, you may hope in God your father that what he has cured, what he is curing, what he has forgiven, will be heard of no more, not now being a constituent part of you. Or if indeed some of your evil things must yet be seen, the truth of them will be seen—that they are things you are at strife with, not things you are cherishing and brooding over.
God will be fair to you—so fair!—fair with the fairness of a father loving his own—who will have you clean, who will neither spare you any needful shame, nor leave you exposed to any that is not needful. The thing we have risen above, is dead and forgotten, or if remembered, there is God to comfort us. ‘If any man sin, we have a comforter with the Father.’ We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit we should be ashamed.
For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart of things. In the name of God let us henceforth have nothing to be ashamed of, and be ready to meet any shame on its way to meet us. For to be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of the truth.
THE TERRIBLE UNVEILING
The only terrible, or at least the supremely terrible revelation is that of a man to himself. What a horror will it not be to a vile man—more than all to a man whose pleasure has been enhanced by the suffering of others—a man that knew himself such as men of ordinary morals would turn from with disgust, but who has hitherto had no insight into what he is—what a horror will it not be to him when his eyes are opened to see himself as the pure see him, as God sees him! Imagine such a man waking all at once, not only to see the eyes of the universe fixed upon him with loathing astonishment, but to see himself at the same moment as those eyes see him! What a waking!—into the full blaze of fact and consciousness, of truth and violation!
To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself!
Or think what it must be for a man counting himself religious, orthodox, exemplary, to perceive suddenly that there was no religion in him, only love of self; no love of the right, only a great love of being in the right! What a discovery—that he was simply a hypocrite—one who loved to appear, and was not!
TREACHERY
‘O God,’ we think, ‘how terrible if it were I!’ Just so terrible is it that it should be Judas! And have I not done things with the same germ in them, a germ which, brought to its evil perfection, would have shown itself the canker-worm, treachery? Except I love my neighbour as myself, I may one day betray him! Let us therefore be compassionate and humble, and hope for every man.
A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter, and thinking himself a good Christian. Continuously repeated sin against the poorest consciousness of evil must have a dread rousing. There are men who never wake to know how wicked they are, till, lo, the gaze of the multitude is upon them!—the multitude staring with self-righteous eyes, doing like things themselves, but not yet found out; sinning after another pattern, therefore the hardest judges, thinking by condemnation to escape judgment. But there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. What if the only thing to wake the treacherous, money-loving thief, Judas, to a knowledge of himself, was to let the thing go on to the end, and his kiss betray the Master? Judas did not hate the Master when he kissed him, but not being a true man, his very love betrayed him.
The only triumph the truth can ever have is its recognition by the heart of the liar. Its victory is in the man who, not content with saying, ‘I was blind and now I see,’ cries out, ‘Lord God, just and true, let me perish, but endure thou! Let me live because thou livest, because thou savest me from the death in myself, the untruth I have nourished in me, and even called righteousness! Hallowed be thy name, for thou only art true; thou only lovest; thou only art holy, for thou only art humble! Thou only art unselfish; thou only hast never sought thine own, but the things of thy children! Yea, O father, be thou true, and every man a liar!’
JUSTICE
Behold the meeting of the divine extremes—the extreme of punishment, the embrace of heaven! They run together; ‘the wheel is come full circle.’ For, I venture to think, there can be no such agony for created soul, as to see itself vile—vile by its own action and choice. Also I venture to think there can be no delight for created soul—short, that is, of being one with the Father—so deep as that of seeing the heaven of forgiveness open, and disclose the shining stair that leads to its own natural home, where the eternal father has been all the time awaiting this return of his child.
Let us try to forethink, to antedate our forgiveness. Dares any man suppose that Jesus would have him hate the traitor through whom he came to the cross?