Today, I'm thinking of just how revolutionary Jesus was. 2000 or so years ago when he showed up the religious world was a chaotic mess. He walked into a religious melting pot of Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Scribes, Priests, Levites, followers of various Rabbis and even followers of John the Baptist. Out of this large bowl of religious soup, Jesus shows up and begins to blow peoples minds with statements like, "Love your enemy. . . do good to those who use you with spite. . . don't judge others . . . don't condemn. . . forgive. . . turn the other cheek. . . go the extra mile. . ." He makes statements that don't exactly line up to any particular groups thinking of the day. As a matter of fact, He almost seems to be in direct opposition to the prevailing thoughts of the day and His ideas were catching on. So much so that one day a group of Pharisees were trying to trap him and they asked of all the law, what was the greatest. This was not an easy question in the mind of the Pharisee because they had 613 laws - so to randomly pick one as being most important was not some flippant task. But Jesus says - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind . . . and the second greatest is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself. . . oh and by the way, you can hang all the law and the prophets on those two statements." Beautiful simplicity.
Why do we make Jesus so complicated? Why do we make Christianity filled with so much religious rhetoric and so hard to understand? Jesus meant for discipleship in His kingdom to be simple. Love God . . . love your neighbor . . . simple. Treat others the way you'd want to be treated . . . simple. Love one another as I love you. . . simple. Jesus went so far as to invite us to "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me . . . for my yoke is EASY and my burden is LIGHT." SIMPLE.
Many Christians that I know in some ways, have become modern-day Pharisees. We spend all our time fighting amongst ourselves over whose right and whose not. We strain at gnats and swallow camels. We clean the outside of the cup with little regard for the inside. We make sure the cemetery has all the grass cut and the flowers put out with little regard for what lies below the surface. We are more concerned that others consider us spiritual or godly or dare I say holy, than we are that God sees us as godly or holy. At the end of the day, how you see me is of little importance - BUT how God sees me is of ETERNAL importance.
So instead of spending our time trying to make discipleship in the kingdom so complicated - what if we returned to our example, Jesus Christ, who made it simple. Jesus looked at future disciples and said "Follow Me". . . simple. Jesus said, "Go and tell others". . . simple. Jesus said that his disciples would be known SIMPLY by their love for one another. It's time that we get back to being Disciples of Jesus Christ - It's time that we make living for Jesus the way He designed it - SIMPLE!
Love everyone - Have SIMPLY a great weekend! ---- RP
No comments:
Post a Comment