Not Like Other People - 09/04/2016

WARNING PREACHY…

If you are asked “What must you do to inherit eternal life?”  How would you answer?  My guess is that most of us would answer with a devout denominational answer -- or more likely, we would answer it ideologically.  

²⁵ On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
²⁶ “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
²⁷ He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
²⁸ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

(Luke 10:25-28)

Did Jesus answer the question the way that you would have?  I am taken that Jesus could have given any answer that he wanted to, but he simply said “love God and love your neighbor.”  That’s it!  We humans have this terrible way of adding hoops to be jumped through into the equation, but Jesus, he just said to love God and love our neighbor.

And as simple as these words are, I think they are the most difficult for humans to actually do.  The phrase components are inseparable.  It is impossible to love God but not our neighbor.  John says that “if you say that you love God but hate your brother you are a liar.” (1 John 4:20)  

Instead of using the simple language of Jesus we Christians are great at complicating the faith by adding a bunch of different hoops to be leaped through.

I could go on about this passage for a while but I want to use it as a set-up for another passage.

⁹ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 

(Luke 18:9-14)

Notice that this parable is told to the person who was “confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.”  Realize that this person does not love God nor his neighbor, but rather he is depending on his own righteousness.  He’s glad he’s not like other people – those robbers, evil doers, adulterers, and tax collectors.  Nope, he’s a good person, he fasts and he gives money, he’s the type of person God wants.  And yet, it was the tax collector who humbly stood in fear of God and begged forgiveness because he knew his own sinfulness.  It was he who was justified in the sight of Jesus.

I find this passage very convicting as I am prone to trust in my own goodness and forget that the only reason I am seen by God as righteous is because of the blood of Jesus which covers me.  I bet you are like me, I’ll wager that many of us tend to see clearly the sawdust in the other person’s eye while never noticing the plank in our own.  

If you are like me, I want to encourage you that there is someone who can get us both through.  Meet me at the Cross of Jesus, we can get on our knees together and ask Jesus to forgive us and get us through.  And you know what?  He will and He does.  I go there often, why don’t you join me?