Post published by sherlock holmes

Gospel of Luke 7:18-33 Commentary

The followers of John finally meet Jesus

As was talked about during a previous commentary in chapter 3, John the Baptizer had a single mission in life: preach to Israel that a Savior would soon walk the earth. Here, because John’s followers were sent to Jesus to ask if he truly was that Savior, we see that John was doing exactly what he was born to do, “Make ready the way of the Lord.” Their faith was most definitely rewarded as Jesus healed many in their presence. However, Jesus did offer John’s followers some advice: “blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” After looking at the NKJV, ESV, ASV, and KJV, a good “layman” interpretation of this statement could be that those who have no difficulty in accepting Jesus’ teachings will be blessed (better off). I’m sure all of us have seen this in some form or another in the lives of those around us.

Jesus calls out the Pharisees (again)

After showing the disciples of John that Jesus was who He claimed to be, he addressed His own followers. From this address, Jesus had nothing but awesome things to say about his relative, so much so that he stated “among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John.” To Jews who saw Elijah the prophet as a quasi-messianic figure, a statement like this was YUGE!!! And it was for a specific point: any member of the kingdom of God would be greater than John. That would be us, not because we earned it, but because of Jesus sacrifice that we can be made whole in a way that John, despite being the greatest prophet ever, would also never have been able to do on his own.

Most of the crowd responds to this address with agreement; they had all been baptized by John previously and believed what he had to say. The Pharisees on the other hand outright rejected John, so much so that John himself called them a “brood of vipers.” This is where Jesus begins to compare them to children who have no consistent moral standard, but only what best maintains their power and authority.

Takeaway

We are given the divine Will of God in the form of the Bible. As Christians, we have a responsibility to “rightly divide the word of truth.” That involves among other things, putting away our personal biases (what we want to be true). If the Bible is the manifestation of the Spirit in written form, and the Spirit can be likened to a sword (Ephesians 6:17) that is to be used against all forms of unrighteousness and lies, then it is possible that we could unintentionally cut ourselves with our own weapon if we fail to use it properly. That is exactly what the Pharisees did time and again, taking the Old Testament Law and using it for personal gain; the Son of God called them out for this. Now they are remembered by most of the world for being the hypocritical scum who executed Christ. It would behoove us to take this lesson to heard and understand that we all have “blind spots.” We ought to do our best fix them, compensate for them in our study, and ultimately be honest with ourselves.

Questions, comments, thoughts? Let’s hear it!!