CHAPTER SIX

THE ELDERS' EVALUATION OF PEOPLE

Scripture Reading: 1 Tim. 2:4; Luke 14:21, 23; 1 Cor. 1:26-29; 12:22-25

In this chapter we want to fellowship about the elders' evaluation of people. Most of us have been wrong in this matter. All human beings like to evaluate others. Whenever we see a new person, we like to weigh him, to put him on the scale, the balance. We desire to find out how much he is worth and how weighty or grave he would or could be. We all have such a habit by birth. This habit has gotten into us already. Even young children have the habit of evaluating others in such a way. We need to come back to the Bible to see how the Lord Jesus evaluates people.

CONCERNING THE SINNERS

God Desiring All People to Be Saved

First Timothy 2:4 says that God desires all people to be saved. According to God's evaluation, He considers everyone the same in His desire for them to be saved.

The Lord Wanting to Get the Poor and Crippled and Blind and Lame, and Even
Commanding Us to Compel Them to Come In

I have heard some say that the ones we visit are not worthwhile for us to work on because they are from the lower class. This is wrong. We need to see what the Lord's way is. The Lord wants to get the poor and crippled and blind and lame, and He even commands us to compel them to come in (Luke 14:21, 23). Would we be encouraged by gaining a "crippled" one? According to our natural being, we look down on people. Furthermore, many of us have set ourselves up as a standard. I told one brother that whenever he goes to any place, he has a "yardstick" in his pocket to measure the people and the things there. He does not measure what is good, but he always likes to measure the worst things. It is wrong for the Lord's servants to have such a habit. Whenever we meet others, we should not measure them in this way.

In the Lord Jesus' earthly ministry, people complained a number of times about the kinds of people He contacted (Luke 15:2; 7:39). When the Lord contacted Zaccheus, He told him, "Today I must stay in your house" (19:5). When others saw this, "they all grumbled, saying, He has gone in to lodge with a sinful man" (v. 7). If you met such a person as Zaccheus today, would you go to visit him and stay with him? Our natural being needs to be transformed to a spiritual being so that we can have the view, the sight, that the Triune God has.

God desires all men to be saved, but actually not one descendant of Adam is worthy of His salvation. We may think that certain people are worthy of the Lord's salvation, but no one is worthy. Daniel 9 records a long confession which Daniel made to God. After Daniel came to know from the book of Jeremiah that the children of Israel would endure seventy years of captivity (v. 2), he made this long confession. His asking for forgiveness was not based upon anything they had done, but upon the Lord's great compassion, His great mercy (v. 18). God's great compassion was the basis for his prayer. Daniel's evaluation of himself and of all his people, including all the rulers and chief men, was that they were in desperate need of God's mercy. We may pray this way at times, but deep within us, we always give ourselves a high evaluation and give others a low evaluation.


Witness Lee - Elders' Training, Book 11: The Eldership and the God-Ordained Way (3), Chapter 6, Section 1 - Living Stream Ministry

CONTENTS

  1. What Is the Church to God and Christ? and
    How Should the Elders Be to the Churches?
  2. The Elders' Interest (Concern) in Others' Spiritual Welfare
  3. The Purpose of the Elders' Contact with People (1)
  4. The Purpose of the Elders' Contact with People (2)
  5. The Purpose of the Elders' Contact with People (3)
  6. The Elders' Evaluation of People
  7. The Spiritual Responsibility of the Elders (1)
  8. The Spiritual Responsibility of the Elders (2)
  9. Feeding the New Believers
  10. Practicing the God-ordained Way and Being Rescued from the Papal and Clergy-laity Systems
  11. Perfecting the Saints to Prophesy in the Church
    Meetings for the Building Up of the Body of Christ
  12. Knowing the Body
  13. Keeping the Oneness of the Body and
    Maintaining a Good Order in the Body

PREFACE

The messages in this book were given by Brother Witness Lee in Anaheim, California. Chapters one through eleven were previously published as individual messages in a series entitled Elders' Training and were given from February 23 through June 15, 1991. Chapters twelve and thirteen were previously published in a small book entitled Further Consideration of the Eldership, the Region of the Work, and the Care for the Body of Christ and were given on July 6-7, 1991.