“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:11-12).
What if, every time you ask God for something, he gives it to you? What if whenever you seek, you find? What if every door you knock on is opened unto you? That’s exactly what Jesus says will happen.
On the face of it, that’s not true: we’ve all had plenty of experiences where we asked God for things and they just didn’t happen. But it is true where it is deepest. If a father wouldn’t give his child a serpent when he asked for fish, he certainly wouldn’t give his child a serpent even if he asked for one. Serpents just aren’t good. Obviously, if we ask for something bad for us, or seek something we shouldn’t find, God won’t hand it over or lead us to it. He won’t go against our freedom to give us something, either: that would be control, not love.
God gives us what we ask for most purely: himself, and his love. This is a radical love, a love that transforms, a love that seeks relationship rather than control. We have the freedom to give ourselves to Christ as he has given himself already to us. We seek him and find him, we ask and he gives himself to us, we knock and he opens unto us.
God is calling us in the Sermon on the Mount to lead lives of radical love, to enter into the love that he has for us by living our lives in it. We are called to live the golden rule because we are called to give up selfishness and seek to find our good in another, to find fulfillment in love of the other. With the love of God within us, we are compelled to turn outward in love – if that love does not spread outward from us to others then we do not have it within ourselves either. The love of God is not a thing to be contained, but a living force that grows as we becoming more loving by giving it away. The love of God is not something to be kept for oneself, for we are stewards meant to share it.
This is love, radicalized.
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