Welcome to the Weekly Thought
Each week I will be updating a little thought from the lesson the week before. If you want you can check out the archives of our sermons at www.thefeastprovidence.org/youtube.
This week we talked some about Jesus’ woes against the Scribes and Pharisees. The harshness of Jesus’ language is a bit surprising to us. Someone at church fairly asked in our Q&A “How do we reconcile Jesus call to a kinder, more righteous spirituality when he is making the call by call people sons of Hell?” The balance is fascinating. Certainly Jesus seems to have a moving scale when it comes to someone’s knowledge and culpability. Jesus expects people who know Scripture and know about God’s work in the world to live differently than those who do not. While Jesus is often patient and softly spoken with those who are outside of the bounds of traditional religion, he is harsh to those who position themselves as teachers. This is somewhat in keeping with the book of James, where we see that “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” This principle is in force in Matthew 23.
Our main take away this week was that it is essential that we are changed by our experience of Jesus. We become different people. The Spirit moves in us to create something different. That new creature, to borrow from Paul’s teaching on the Spirit, is more loving, joyous, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. I cannot overemphasize how that definition needs to drive our evaluation of others. If you know a life long Christian that is short fused, sees the worst in others, is harsh with people who are hurting, and just generally is a cantankerous, mean person, something is deeply wrong. People who follow Jesus should be lovely to be around. It is easy as followers of Jesus to look for someone who knows the Bible well or has a lot of influence, but those things don’t necessarily mean someone is being formed into the image of Christ. It is amazing how much the criteria is pretty simple. People who follow Jesus aren’t jerks.