This week we looked at the passage in which Jesus talks about praying, giving to the needy and fasting for the right reasons rather than doing these things so that other people think you look 'holy.'
This passage (Matthew 6:1-18) first looks at giving to the needy, then prayer and finally fasting. In each passage, Jesus tells us not to do these things so that they are 'seen by others' because this is 'as the hypocrites do.' He gives various examples of the ways in which people go about making their 'acts of righteousness' obvious to others so that they are revered and honoured by men. Jesus says that these people have 'received their reward in full.' Instead he tells us that we ought to do these things 'in secret' because our 'Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward' us.
In the passage about prayer (Matthew 6:5-15), Jesus gives us a perfect example of how to pray in what we now know as 'The Lord's Prayer' (or the 'Our Father,' if you are Catholic). This begins with praise and adoration of our Father, remembering who and where he is (that he is in Heaven and therefore sovereign). Then the prayer goes on to express the hope that the Lord's will alone is done and that his Kingdom will start to break out here on Earth as it will be in Heaven. Then, Jesus says we should humbly ask God to provide all that we need for while we are here on Earth before asking him to forgive all that we have done wrong, which in turn is followed by the promise that we in turn will forgive those who have wronged us. Finally the prayer asks God to keep us safe from temptation and give us deliverance from evil. Once he has finished the prayer, Jesus tells us that 'If we forgive those who sin against us, our heavenly Father will also forgive us, but if we do not forgive others their sins, our Father will not forgive our sins.' (Verses 14-15) Which is something we all must not take lightly: there's no footnote reading a list of examples of when somebody has done something 'so bad' that it's okay if we don't forgive them. We must remember that when we accept Jesus into our lives, confessing and repenting from our sins, the Lord forgives us infinitely more than we will ever have to forgive another person. When others wrong us, it's easy to feel like we're wholly in the right, but we can forget that we will, in our life times, hurt others just as much if not more and therefore we are not perfect. God, however, is perfect and will never wrong us. So, when he forgives our sins, he expects us to do the same for others. He reminds us in other parts of the Bible (eg Romans 12:19) that he sees all that happens and will repay those who wrong us if they do not repent, and therefore it's not up to us to seek revenge. (God does not say anywhere that he is happy when other people sin against us, or even that he does not care. Therefore, 'forgiveness' is not saying that it is okay for us to be wronged, but rather that we will not continue to be tangled in that wrong: if the person who committed the wrong is never sorry, that will essentially only ever be their problem).
The overall message of these three passages is that we should check where our hearts are and what our motives for living the way we do are. For example, in the passage about giving to the needy (Matthew 6:1-4), Jesus says that when we give to the poor we should: 'Not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.' This taken literally, however, is not possible: of course we ourselves will be aware of what we do. Therefore we know that God is really saying that we should be naturally wanting to do things like giving to the poor: it should not be a special occasion when we do 'acts of righteousness' (good deeds) but rather it should just be the way that we live. We are called to live lives of love, and this is the sort of behaviour that would naturally occur if we were. Similarly, we need to make sure that we are praying simply for the joy of speaking to our heavenly Father rather than to show other people what long and 'beautiful' prayers we can say. We shouldn't be worried about saying 'the right thing,' but rather talking from the heart as if no one else were able to hear (which sometimes may come out as a rather long prayer, but we shouldn't say long prayers just to make it look like we have a lot of 'holy' things to say: if it's an honest prayer from the heart that happens to also be long, this is not a sin). Finally, on fasting, Jesus says that we shouldn't moan about being hungry throughout our fast. (If and) when we fast, this is between us and God: there will be specific personal reasons why we have chosen to do so and other people don't need to know about it.
Lois and Eleanor
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Week 9 (09.11.08)
This week we looked at the part of the Bible in which Jesus talks about the Old Testament saying, "Eye for eye and tooth for tooth," and about love for our enemies.
In this passage (Matthew 5:38-48), Jesus quotes the scriptures where it says "eye for eye and tooth for tooth." He then tell his listeners that they shouldn't "resist an evil person." If someone hits them on the right cheek, they should turn their left cheek to be hit also. And if someone wants to take their tunic they should give them their cloak as well. If someone forces them to "go one mile" they should go two miles. He also says that we should give to those who ask for things from us, and that we should not turn away from those who want to borrow something. He then goes on to quote the saying "Love your neighbour and hate your enemy," the first part of which can be found in Leviticus 19:18, but tells us that instead we should love those who are our enemies and pray for those who persecute us so that we can be true children of our Father in Heaven. He goes on to say that God makes the sun rise and the rain fall on those who do good and those who don't at the same time. He says that there is no reward for those who love people that show them love back, reminding us that even the tax collectors (who everyone knew to be evil in Jesus' time) manage to love those who love them in return. Again he says that if we only greet those we love we are behaving in exactly the same way as everyone else because even the pagans (the people who were neither Jews nor Christians in that time) did this. He concludes by saying, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
We first spoke about what Jesus was saying about revenge. We thought that this passage had a lot of references to things that would have been relevant in Jesus' time, but that don't really make sense today, so we went through the passage verse by verse to 'translate' it so that it speaks more clearly to us today. So in the end, we had four 'stories' that looked something like this: "You have heard it said, 'If someone steals your car, take their car, and if someone steals your money, take their money too,' but I tell you, do not give into the temptation to do wrong to someone who has done wrong to you. If someone breaks one window in your house, let them break the rest of the windows in your house too, if they want to sue you for your house, give them your car as well, if someone makes you help them with the shopping on one day, carry their shopping for the whole week." Basically our conclusion was that Jesus doesn't want us to take revenge on people who have hurt us in some way; or that if someone wants to take advantage of you in some way, we should show that we love them anyway, and rather than retaliating with more evil, we will show that we aren't letting them take advantage of us by giving them more than they tried to take.
We also spoke about the passage that speaks about loving our enemies. Jesus knows that there are going to be people who we find annoying or who really don't like us for some reason (maybe because we follow him), so he is not saying that we should pretend to get on with everyone, but that we should especially take care to love those who we don't and treat us badly, even if the way they treat us seems unfair. We asked why we should love those who clearly don't love us and we thought that, for one thing, we might actually start liking them or help them like us and no longer want to treat us badly; and secondly because we want to be different from all the people around us who don't follow Jesus, we want to show them that being a Christian actually makes us different from the world, so we would be teaching the person who is our enemy the gospel by returning their hate with God's love. Finally we thought about what it means to 'love' someone who actually we don't like for various reasons. Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13, and from reading this we soon find out that love is not just a feeling but is actually in what you choose to do and how you choose to treat someone. For example, if you do not like someone, you could choose to make this obvious in various ways, or you could choose to treat them with love anyway. This is not to show off or to be a 'goody two-shoes,' but if done in a spirit of wanting to please God and to live in such a way that would reveal him to those who don't yet know him, or to set an example to those who do; then we can know that we have a clear conscience, because we've done all we can to make sure that a friendly relationship between us and our enemy is possible. This can be really difficult, but it is something God has commanded us to do and therefore he will help us and we know it is possible because he would not ask us to do something that isn't possible: as Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Christ, because he gives me strength." Moreover, if someone knows that they are treating you deliberately badly and you return this with a loving attitude and actions that show them love, you will really have an impact on their life, even if you don't see this in the time that you know them. Romans 12:19-20 says "Do not take revenge, my friends ... on the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he's thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." This does not mean that we should seek to act kindly towards those who are our enemies in order that burning coals will suddenly fall from the heavens onto their heads, because that is not a loving attitude! It means that they will be ashamed of the way in which they have treated you because of the way that you are responding to this treatment. This doesn't mean that they will always change the way they see you: sometimes people will harden their hearts when faced with this way of being that is so much the opposite of how the world tells us we should behave, but at least you know and God knows that you are blameless in the situation and therefore if you are only treated worse by the one you are trying to be loving towards, you can trust that God will sort that out. However, often when we respond to cruel behaviour with persistent love, we see God work through and turn the situation around, so we should always carry on living the way he wants us to and pray that he will help us to do so and also that he will use the fact that we are being faithful to him to change the lives of those around us.
The last thing we took note of was verse 42 which tells us to give to those who ask and not to reject anyone who wants to borrow something from us. We spoke about how everything we own really belongs to God and therefore if he has blessed us with more things and more money than others, it is not because he loves us more, or wants us to be 'happier' than others for some reason. Instead, he wants us to use these things in the same way as we should our talents: to bring him glory. Therefore if we have something, we have it so that we can help those who do not, they will see God's love when they see how generous and kind you are. We will talk more about this when we look at 'Treasures in Heaven.'
Lois and Eleanor
In this passage (Matthew 5:38-48), Jesus quotes the scriptures where it says "eye for eye and tooth for tooth." He then tell his listeners that they shouldn't "resist an evil person." If someone hits them on the right cheek, they should turn their left cheek to be hit also. And if someone wants to take their tunic they should give them their cloak as well. If someone forces them to "go one mile" they should go two miles. He also says that we should give to those who ask for things from us, and that we should not turn away from those who want to borrow something. He then goes on to quote the saying "Love your neighbour and hate your enemy," the first part of which can be found in Leviticus 19:18, but tells us that instead we should love those who are our enemies and pray for those who persecute us so that we can be true children of our Father in Heaven. He goes on to say that God makes the sun rise and the rain fall on those who do good and those who don't at the same time. He says that there is no reward for those who love people that show them love back, reminding us that even the tax collectors (who everyone knew to be evil in Jesus' time) manage to love those who love them in return. Again he says that if we only greet those we love we are behaving in exactly the same way as everyone else because even the pagans (the people who were neither Jews nor Christians in that time) did this. He concludes by saying, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
We first spoke about what Jesus was saying about revenge. We thought that this passage had a lot of references to things that would have been relevant in Jesus' time, but that don't really make sense today, so we went through the passage verse by verse to 'translate' it so that it speaks more clearly to us today. So in the end, we had four 'stories' that looked something like this: "You have heard it said, 'If someone steals your car, take their car, and if someone steals your money, take their money too,' but I tell you, do not give into the temptation to do wrong to someone who has done wrong to you. If someone breaks one window in your house, let them break the rest of the windows in your house too, if they want to sue you for your house, give them your car as well, if someone makes you help them with the shopping on one day, carry their shopping for the whole week." Basically our conclusion was that Jesus doesn't want us to take revenge on people who have hurt us in some way; or that if someone wants to take advantage of you in some way, we should show that we love them anyway, and rather than retaliating with more evil, we will show that we aren't letting them take advantage of us by giving them more than they tried to take.
We also spoke about the passage that speaks about loving our enemies. Jesus knows that there are going to be people who we find annoying or who really don't like us for some reason (maybe because we follow him), so he is not saying that we should pretend to get on with everyone, but that we should especially take care to love those who we don't and treat us badly, even if the way they treat us seems unfair. We asked why we should love those who clearly don't love us and we thought that, for one thing, we might actually start liking them or help them like us and no longer want to treat us badly; and secondly because we want to be different from all the people around us who don't follow Jesus, we want to show them that being a Christian actually makes us different from the world, so we would be teaching the person who is our enemy the gospel by returning their hate with God's love. Finally we thought about what it means to 'love' someone who actually we don't like for various reasons. Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13, and from reading this we soon find out that love is not just a feeling but is actually in what you choose to do and how you choose to treat someone. For example, if you do not like someone, you could choose to make this obvious in various ways, or you could choose to treat them with love anyway. This is not to show off or to be a 'goody two-shoes,' but if done in a spirit of wanting to please God and to live in such a way that would reveal him to those who don't yet know him, or to set an example to those who do; then we can know that we have a clear conscience, because we've done all we can to make sure that a friendly relationship between us and our enemy is possible. This can be really difficult, but it is something God has commanded us to do and therefore he will help us and we know it is possible because he would not ask us to do something that isn't possible: as Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Christ, because he gives me strength." Moreover, if someone knows that they are treating you deliberately badly and you return this with a loving attitude and actions that show them love, you will really have an impact on their life, even if you don't see this in the time that you know them. Romans 12:19-20 says "Do not take revenge, my friends ... on the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he's thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." This does not mean that we should seek to act kindly towards those who are our enemies in order that burning coals will suddenly fall from the heavens onto their heads, because that is not a loving attitude! It means that they will be ashamed of the way in which they have treated you because of the way that you are responding to this treatment. This doesn't mean that they will always change the way they see you: sometimes people will harden their hearts when faced with this way of being that is so much the opposite of how the world tells us we should behave, but at least you know and God knows that you are blameless in the situation and therefore if you are only treated worse by the one you are trying to be loving towards, you can trust that God will sort that out. However, often when we respond to cruel behaviour with persistent love, we see God work through and turn the situation around, so we should always carry on living the way he wants us to and pray that he will help us to do so and also that he will use the fact that we are being faithful to him to change the lives of those around us.
The last thing we took note of was verse 42 which tells us to give to those who ask and not to reject anyone who wants to borrow something from us. We spoke about how everything we own really belongs to God and therefore if he has blessed us with more things and more money than others, it is not because he loves us more, or wants us to be 'happier' than others for some reason. Instead, he wants us to use these things in the same way as we should our talents: to bring him glory. Therefore if we have something, we have it so that we can help those who do not, they will see God's love when they see how generous and kind you are. We will talk more about this when we look at 'Treasures in Heaven.'
Lois and Eleanor
Friday, 7 November 2008
Week 8 (02.11.08)
This week we looked at the passage in the Bible where Jesus talks about adultary, divorce and oaths (making a promise in the name of something).
In this passage (Matthew 5:27-37), Jesus reminds us of the Commandment, "Do not commit adultary" from Exodus 20:14 and then says that "Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already commited adultary with her in his heart. He then tells us to chop off the hand that causes us to sin, or to gouge the eye that causes us to sin out, for "It is better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." Then Jesus goes on to talk about divorce, quoting the place in the scriptures where it says that "Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce" and then adds that "Anyone who divorves his wife forces her to commit adultary and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultary." Finally, Jesus uses an old saying, "Do not break your oaths but keep those you made to the Lord," and then tells us we should "Not swear at all" by anything, for nothing is ours to swear by: it all belongs to to God. Jesus says instead that we should let our " 'Yes be yes and [our] no be no. " (ie, say what we mean; if we say we will do something, we should, and equally if we say we won't we should not do it.)
We first talked about the way in which all three of these subsections speak about how we as Christians should keep our promises. When you marry someone, you promise to give yourself only to them and to love and respect them for the rest of your life, so if you commit adultary, you break this promise and this does a lot of damage to the person you betrayed and also to yourself (all sin is always harmful to the one who commits it). Again, if you marry someone, you promise to remain married to them for the rest of your life as this is the way God intended marriage to be, so if you divorce them then you have broken this promise. If divorcing someone causes them to become an adulterer/ess (unless they have been unfaithful in the marriage, which Jesus says is different), then you should not want to do this as if it is wrong to sin yourself, it is worse to lead someone else into sin. Then Jesus tells us we should never swear by anything, for example, if I were to say I was going to do something "By Heaven," and then did not do it, I would have made a promise by something that does not belong to me in the first place which is really wrong. Moreover, if you are a Christian and you make promises to your non-Christian friends and family "By Heaven" and then do not keep your promise you will firstly be behaving the same way everyone else who does not follow Jesus does and therefore won't be showing that being a Christian makes any difference to your life, and secondly it will seem as if the Heaven you swore by meant nothing to you. So Jesus finishes by telling us that we should only make a promise if we really mean to keep it and that if we know we won't, we should say so to begin with rather than letting someone put their hope in us and us letting them down and ultimately being dishonest.
Then we said how this passage is telling us to put off sin. Jesus says that it is better to get rid of the part of our body which causes us to sin than for us to end up in hell. He did not mean that we should start going about loping off our arms and legs when we hit and kick people, but rather that we should take practical measures to avoid falling into patterns of sin in areas we know we are weak in. For example, if from time to time we feel tempted to go on websites we know we shouldn't, it is better for us to stop using the computer all together than for us to do this more and more often and risk falling away from God in the end. (That is not to say that our sins affect our salvation, or that any sin is too much to be washed clean by Jesus, but rather that when we sin continually without repenting / turning away from this sin our hearts become hard and it becomes more difficult to hear from God and some people can get so caught up in sin that they lose their faith altogether).
We then looked at how this passage is also talking about the fact that we should be respectful towards members of the opposite sex. Sometimes, we think that we are doing well because we haven't ACTUALLY commited adultary (this includes sleeping with someone before you're married too, even if you intend to marry this person), but here Jesus tells us that even if we have just wanted someone who we are not married to in that way then we have already commited adultary with them in our hearts. Purity is not just about actions we carry out, but about our hearts. If we think about people in a lustful way then we are not treating them with the love that Jesus says we should treat everyone. He wants us to look at our brothers and sisters and friends who are not Christians in the same way he looks at them and at us.
Finally, we spoke about what we can learn from this for all relationships in our lives: friends and family as well as romantic ones. We said that Jesus blesses us with relationships not just so that we can benefit from what the other person does for us all the time but also because of the ways in which we can bless them and their lives. We said that we should look at our motives behind certain friendships and romantic relationships; ie, do you just want a boyfriend because it 'looks cool' and all your friends have one? Do you just want to be friends with her because she's clever and lets you copy her homework? Do you respect your parents, or do you treat your mum in a way that shows that you think she is just there to run around after you? Or do you really love and value the people God has put in your life and want to be the sort of person that they always look forward to seeing and talking to because you show them this love so clearly?
Sometimes it's hard to tell if we are doing all these things properly because we can think we are showing everyone love when in fact we are just being selfish in relationships and therefore we should all regularly pray that God would reveal areas in our lives to us in which we are not living the way he wants so that we can give these over to him and start trying our best, with his help, to love everyone as we should.
Lois and Eleanor
In this passage (Matthew 5:27-37), Jesus reminds us of the Commandment, "Do not commit adultary" from Exodus 20:14 and then says that "Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already commited adultary with her in his heart. He then tells us to chop off the hand that causes us to sin, or to gouge the eye that causes us to sin out, for "It is better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." Then Jesus goes on to talk about divorce, quoting the place in the scriptures where it says that "Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce" and then adds that "Anyone who divorves his wife forces her to commit adultary and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultary." Finally, Jesus uses an old saying, "Do not break your oaths but keep those you made to the Lord," and then tells us we should "Not swear at all" by anything, for nothing is ours to swear by: it all belongs to to God. Jesus says instead that we should let our " 'Yes be yes and [our] no be no. " (ie, say what we mean; if we say we will do something, we should, and equally if we say we won't we should not do it.)
We first talked about the way in which all three of these subsections speak about how we as Christians should keep our promises. When you marry someone, you promise to give yourself only to them and to love and respect them for the rest of your life, so if you commit adultary, you break this promise and this does a lot of damage to the person you betrayed and also to yourself (all sin is always harmful to the one who commits it). Again, if you marry someone, you promise to remain married to them for the rest of your life as this is the way God intended marriage to be, so if you divorce them then you have broken this promise. If divorcing someone causes them to become an adulterer/ess (unless they have been unfaithful in the marriage, which Jesus says is different), then you should not want to do this as if it is wrong to sin yourself, it is worse to lead someone else into sin. Then Jesus tells us we should never swear by anything, for example, if I were to say I was going to do something "By Heaven," and then did not do it, I would have made a promise by something that does not belong to me in the first place which is really wrong. Moreover, if you are a Christian and you make promises to your non-Christian friends and family "By Heaven" and then do not keep your promise you will firstly be behaving the same way everyone else who does not follow Jesus does and therefore won't be showing that being a Christian makes any difference to your life, and secondly it will seem as if the Heaven you swore by meant nothing to you. So Jesus finishes by telling us that we should only make a promise if we really mean to keep it and that if we know we won't, we should say so to begin with rather than letting someone put their hope in us and us letting them down and ultimately being dishonest.
Then we said how this passage is telling us to put off sin. Jesus says that it is better to get rid of the part of our body which causes us to sin than for us to end up in hell. He did not mean that we should start going about loping off our arms and legs when we hit and kick people, but rather that we should take practical measures to avoid falling into patterns of sin in areas we know we are weak in. For example, if from time to time we feel tempted to go on websites we know we shouldn't, it is better for us to stop using the computer all together than for us to do this more and more often and risk falling away from God in the end. (That is not to say that our sins affect our salvation, or that any sin is too much to be washed clean by Jesus, but rather that when we sin continually without repenting / turning away from this sin our hearts become hard and it becomes more difficult to hear from God and some people can get so caught up in sin that they lose their faith altogether).
We then looked at how this passage is also talking about the fact that we should be respectful towards members of the opposite sex. Sometimes, we think that we are doing well because we haven't ACTUALLY commited adultary (this includes sleeping with someone before you're married too, even if you intend to marry this person), but here Jesus tells us that even if we have just wanted someone who we are not married to in that way then we have already commited adultary with them in our hearts. Purity is not just about actions we carry out, but about our hearts. If we think about people in a lustful way then we are not treating them with the love that Jesus says we should treat everyone. He wants us to look at our brothers and sisters and friends who are not Christians in the same way he looks at them and at us.
Finally, we spoke about what we can learn from this for all relationships in our lives: friends and family as well as romantic ones. We said that Jesus blesses us with relationships not just so that we can benefit from what the other person does for us all the time but also because of the ways in which we can bless them and their lives. We said that we should look at our motives behind certain friendships and romantic relationships; ie, do you just want a boyfriend because it 'looks cool' and all your friends have one? Do you just want to be friends with her because she's clever and lets you copy her homework? Do you respect your parents, or do you treat your mum in a way that shows that you think she is just there to run around after you? Or do you really love and value the people God has put in your life and want to be the sort of person that they always look forward to seeing and talking to because you show them this love so clearly?
Sometimes it's hard to tell if we are doing all these things properly because we can think we are showing everyone love when in fact we are just being selfish in relationships and therefore we should all regularly pray that God would reveal areas in our lives to us in which we are not living the way he wants so that we can give these over to him and start trying our best, with his help, to love everyone as we should.
Lois and Eleanor
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Week 7 (26.10.08)
This week we looked at the passage in the Bible where Jesus talks about anger.
In this passage (Matthew 5:21-26), Jesus brings up the Old Testament law "Do not murder," (Exodus 20:13) as well as a bit that had been added on to the end, "For any who murders will be subject to judgement." He then says that "Anyone who is angry with their brother will be subject to judgement." This is not Jesus saying that committing murder is okay now, but that to be angry with someone in your heart is just as bad in God's eyes. This is hard for us to understand because we see sin in a human way (being human..), but God, who is completely good and knows a lot more than we do anyway, sees things differently. Jesus says that if we are angry with someone then we will be subject to judgement just as much as someone who has murdered someone else, so we shouldn't think that we're doing well just to be angry with someone but not kill them, but instead we should give that anger over to God.
Then Jesus says that if you call someone else a name (he uses the word "raca" here, which was something people back then called one another to show great dislike), then you are subject to judgement from the "Sanhedrin" - this would be like the Jewish elders... sort of - again showing that it's not okay just to show anger in other ways that are not physically violent or going to hurt someone's body. Instead, any display of anger or any anger that we've allowed to stay in our hearts is wrong and damaging.
Finally Jesus says that anyone who calls someone else a "fool" is "in danger of the fires of hell." This is the worst result of all the things he has mentioned so far, and at first this can look a little confusing, why should just saying someone else is stupid be worse than calling them names, being angry or even murdering them? Well, it's about the attitude of our hearts. Thinking someone else is a fool is thinking that you are better than them, but to God we are all equal: not one of us deserves to go to Heaven by what we've done or not done in our lives and none of us is worse than anyone else. We are loved by him the same and Jesus died on the cross for us all, so we need to remember that and not look down on others.
Thankfully, if we are truly sorry about our anger or times when we have thought other people were worth less than ourselves, we can give these things to God in prayer and ask for forgiveness from him. Because of what Jesus has done, we don't have to suffer for these things we have done wrong if we decide to trust in him instead of ourselves.
Lois and Eleanor
In this passage (Matthew 5:21-26), Jesus brings up the Old Testament law "Do not murder," (Exodus 20:13) as well as a bit that had been added on to the end, "For any who murders will be subject to judgement." He then says that "Anyone who is angry with their brother will be subject to judgement." This is not Jesus saying that committing murder is okay now, but that to be angry with someone in your heart is just as bad in God's eyes. This is hard for us to understand because we see sin in a human way (being human..), but God, who is completely good and knows a lot more than we do anyway, sees things differently. Jesus says that if we are angry with someone then we will be subject to judgement just as much as someone who has murdered someone else, so we shouldn't think that we're doing well just to be angry with someone but not kill them, but instead we should give that anger over to God.
Then Jesus says that if you call someone else a name (he uses the word "raca" here, which was something people back then called one another to show great dislike), then you are subject to judgement from the "Sanhedrin" - this would be like the Jewish elders... sort of - again showing that it's not okay just to show anger in other ways that are not physically violent or going to hurt someone's body. Instead, any display of anger or any anger that we've allowed to stay in our hearts is wrong and damaging.
Finally Jesus says that anyone who calls someone else a "fool" is "in danger of the fires of hell." This is the worst result of all the things he has mentioned so far, and at first this can look a little confusing, why should just saying someone else is stupid be worse than calling them names, being angry or even murdering them? Well, it's about the attitude of our hearts. Thinking someone else is a fool is thinking that you are better than them, but to God we are all equal: not one of us deserves to go to Heaven by what we've done or not done in our lives and none of us is worse than anyone else. We are loved by him the same and Jesus died on the cross for us all, so we need to remember that and not look down on others.
Thankfully, if we are truly sorry about our anger or times when we have thought other people were worth less than ourselves, we can give these things to God in prayer and ask for forgiveness from him. Because of what Jesus has done, we don't have to suffer for these things we have done wrong if we decide to trust in him instead of ourselves.
Lois and Eleanor
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)