When we’re really honest with ourselves, none of us is truly
holy and righteous. We need the power of Christ every day of our lives to keep
walking the talk. All someone needs to do is bump into me on the street and I’m
ready to curse them out, never mind just simply calling them an idiot. Jesus
tells us in Matthew 5:22, “Anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca’(or
idiot) is answerable to the court. And anyone who says ‘You fool!’ will be in
danger of the fire of hell.” On my own, I’m saying that under my breath all day
long, and worse.
The Pharisees kept judging Jesus because He spent
His time with sinners. People who were obviously not living all high and holy,
people who did things openly that were known to be sin. In Matthew 9:10-12, we
read, “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors
and sinners came to eat with Him and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw
this, they asked His disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors
and sinners?’ On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a
doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not
sacrifice.’ For I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners.” In Luke
7:46-50, we read the story of the woman who pours expensive oil from an
alabaster jar on Jesus, and weeping, kisses His feet and dries them with her hair. It is one of
the most astonishingly beautiful images, and yet there are the Pharisees again,
making a judgment about the woman and about Jesus because He allows her to
touch Him. We never hear what the woman’s sins are, she is just described as a
sinful woman, and Simon the Pharisee says, “If this man were a prophet, he
would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is.” But Jesus knows
exactly who she is, and He shares a story with Simon about two men who are
forgiven debts, one who owes a great deal and another much less, and asks Simon
which one would love the one who has forgiven the debt more. Simon answers that
it would be the one with the greater debt, and Jesus tells him he is correct,
and then goes on to describe how Simon has not shown Jesus, as a guest in his home, the most basic common
courtesies of the time, but that the woman has done extravagantly more for Him
out of love.
God is love, and the most important thing to Him is that we
show love. Not just a show as a hypocrite puts on a show, but really show love
out of really feeling love. He also wants us to know that we are loved, because
He knows that unless we feel loved, we cannot feel love for others, and that
when we do feel love, we can love others to overflowing. If we know that we are loved with a love that can always forgive, we can be forgiving of others and not judge them. We have to be careful
that we are not just sinning because we know that we’ll be forgiven. Paul tells
us in Romans 6:1, “Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? God
forbid!” But the promise of forgiveness and mercy is there for all of us and it
is important that we always remember that.
I know people who are so much like the Pharisees. Sometimes
they’re people who have been Christians all their lives, or at least for a very
long time, and sometimes they’re people who once were really big sinners who
were not walking with God at all. There are some people who treat church like a
club and God like a business contact who you don’t want to share with anyone
else because you might lose out on a deal yourself. But God isn’t like that. He
loves all of us in an equally extravagant way, and His love is big enough to cover
and surround and heal each and every one of us in the way that we most need it.
And just as with everything else, the more we give of His love, the more we
receive it back again. Proverbs 11:25 tells us, “whoever refreshes others will
be refreshed.” That is from the New International Version, and the International
Standard Version goes even further, “anyone who gives water will receive a
flood in return.” And we read in Luke 6:38,“Give and it will be given to you. A
good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured
into your lap.” That is the way that God operates. When we give, we receive
even more in return.
I know that I need mercy every day. I am like that woman who
was forgiven so much, and He continues to forgive me every day and help me live
my life in a better way. There are times when people really do terrible things,
things that it seems impossible to forgive. It’s bad enough when it’s people
who don’t know the Lord, but at least then I can pray for their salvation –
that is after He has helped me get past the anger and hurt. But when it’s
someone who calls themselves a Christian? Someone who talks all the talk? That’s
a place of very deep pain for me, a place where it is hard for me to forgive and easy to want God to punish them, because they don’t even realize what they are doing
and so they just keep doing it and causing more pain because they think they’re
right in doing what they’re doing.
It’s at times like that when I need mercy the most. When I
am feeling justified in being angry and wanting vengeance, when I call out to
God and ask for justice, forgetting that if He had given me what I deserved, I
would have been dead a long time ago. Instead I am alive and full of His
vibrant life. Instead of being cursed, I received blessing. How can I think that I
have the right to judge anyone else or ask for Him to bring His judgment on
them, how can I believe that I can be the judge of their heart? We can’t ever
know what another person is feeling, or what their life is like unless we can
somehow be that person. There were so many things I did in my life that I did
out of ignorance and fear and desperation. There were other things I did out of
foolishness and others that I did out of blindness. God knows that, because He
knows all hearts, but if someone else had been doing the judging, I’d be toast.
In Psalm 59:16, David writes “But I will sing of your power;
yes I will sing aloud of Your mercy in the morning; for You have been my
defense, and refuge in the day of my trouble. To You O My Strength, I will sing
praises; for God is my defense, My God of mercy.” There are times when we all
need mercy, and when we give it we will receive it when we need it. David was
human like all of us, and he had his moments of rage and anger against his
enemies and those who were trying to kill him, those who were trying to keep
him from the blessing of God that had been promised to him. But after he had
poured out his heart, honestly, before God, he was always able to say as he
does in Psalm 56:4, “in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do
to me?” It is when we are able to be honest with God that we can receive His
mercy. It is when we know that we are human, that we do sin, and that without
Him we cannot do anything, but with Him we can do all things, that He can work miraculously in our lives. It is in that
place of humility, of going before Him with all of who we are, the good, the
bad and the ugly, that we can find the mercy that we need to be free from everything
that is holding us back from walking in the blessings He has for us.
Jesus did not choose to walk on the earth to visit with people who
thought they were righteous. Matthew 9:13 in the New Living Translation puts it
this way, “I have come not to call those who think they are righteous, but
those who know they are sinners.” When we can admit who we are in all honesty, then we
can begin to walk in His truth and His light, and we can begin to begin again and finally
be restored to all that He has in store for us.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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