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Luke dedicates his story to a lover of God. God begins the preparation for the arrival of Messiah: starts with the birth of a prophet hailing from Levi tribe, anointed at conception for the service of preparing people's attitude before the King's arrival, and to tell people how to be forgiven. Next in God's schedule: the birth of the promised Messiah from the Davidic line through God's creating out of nothing in the womb. Spirit testifies through mouths of three witnesses that Jesus is God, and the promised Messiah. lk 2 Angels testify that Jesus is Saviour for all people, and the long awaited Messiah of Israel. Spirit testifies through 2 more witnesses Jesus is the One who is Saviour for Jews and Gentiles, who will expose people's true allegiances. Jesus continues to grow intellectually, physically, socially. lk 3 God ignites John for his ministry to prepare a people to receive their King. John calls the Jews not to rely on their physical lineage to Abraham as their life-line to God. Judgment is coming: unless you reform your self-centred, harmful behaviour, the Messiah will filter you out of His kingdom. God makes contact with Israel this time in gentleness, not in thunders and smoke. lk 4 The Spirit leads Jesus to His first official match against the devil's temptation. Jesus is tested and proven to be a Priest who is able to deliver His people from slavery to sin, and a Messiah whose kingdom promises are rock solid. Jesus has nothing to respond to Satan's enticement except what God has already declared. Spirit leads Jesus' preaching and healing. Familiarity breeds contempt. Jesus' own long-time town neighbours want to kill Him for suggesting God will not show His power to the unbelieving Israel and extend His power of kindness instead to believing Gentiles. They must have charged Him with blasphemy. They were not ready to acknowledge their indifference toward God. Demons cannot remain under cover long due to overwhelming fear of the One who has power to destroy them in hell. Jesus prevents the spirits of lies from speaking the truth of His identity. Jesus has His priority of preaching life-saving truth rather than temporal healings. lk 5 Spirit authenticates that Jesus is God by His power over nature, and disease. Spirit moves His chosen people to pledge allegiance to Jesus. Only the people who has the need to be forgiven need Jesus. Jesus refuses His people to be associated with meaningless rituals of a dead religion. lk 6 Jesus quotes Scripture, performs acts of kindness, and teaches people, all in effect knocking over the Pharisee's carefully built house of cards over and over again, and they don't like it. Jesus teaches: The kingdom is upside down in relation to this present world: Your indulgence in earthly joys don't guarantee your place in the kingdom. In fact, it may mean you belong right here with the unbelievers, the stakeholders of this world. Your earthly miseries don't disqualify your place in the kingdom. In fact, your miseries in the path of obedience will make your stocks go up in the future kingdom; Return good for evil, with zero expectation of respect or thanks from the other guy. You are acting godly as a result. Self-righteous condemnation of others will not excuse their own like-guilt. The ones who are quick to find splinter in others are characterized as those who are impaled with a 2x4. Humour and sarcasm. You can learn a lot about people if you let them talk for a while. It is meaningless to call Jesus Lord when you are not His slave. In order to be saved, you must not only hear but do. And those who only hear but do not do it do not have integrity. And those who do not have integrity are empty, false professors, who claim to be something they are not. They are still slaves of sin. lk 7 A day in the life of Jesus in Israel: Subverting expectations. While the centurion finds precious his ill slave, and while the Jewish elders find of great value the centurion because of his charitable deeds to Israel, Jesus values from men, of all things, their faith in Him, which acknowledges, despite their religious works, the smallness of their greatness in the face of the Lord of lords. He always honours it regardless of who possesses it. Jesus rewinds the clock for a widow who was expecting a harsh life where she must fend for herself. The entire power of sin holds no traction against Jesus' act of compassion. Jesus confounds John the Baptist's idea of a wrathful Messiah who cleans house. Instead, the wicked is still left to roam, and the righteous are at the mercy of the wicked. But Jesus redirects John's attention to the necessity of fulfilling the Scripture. As great a privilege John had in announcing the coming of the King, greater privilege is that one odd believer's who proclaims the resurrection of Christ. Jesus illustrates the implacability of unbelief in the face of insurmountable truth. Unbelievers will always find a way to justify their unbelief by finding fault in messengers, because they love their sin. Jesus subverts the most important expectation of all: the one who has the most love for God is one who has been forgiven the most. The one who has no sins for which to be forgiven feels no love or indebtedness to God. lk 8 Jesus shuts the door on further revelation to the masses who only flock to Him for His miracles. There are different kinds of response to God's word: some reject it outright, some believe only when convenient, some can't believe due to social pressures. Only few have the heart to believe and obey, and stay loyal. To someone who believes, more truth will be given. But if someone who continues to reject God's Word, when they have the opportunity to believe, will have no opportunity in eternity. Jesus is not a mere man: He acknowledges only relationships that matter in the kingdom of God: the relationship only the believers have with God; He stills the disquiet waves of the sea; He has authority to punish demons; He has power to create life. lk 9 Jesus expedites His preaching ministry through delegation, and gives them healing power for authentication purposes. Herod keeps playing with fire, as he irreverently treats Jesus and John as common sensational news. After affirming His identity as Messiah, Jesus immediately corrects the disciples' expectation of glory of the kingdom without pain. You must care about nothing else but doing the will of Jesus and His kingdom, and shape everything else, your life, to serve His great cause. It wins Jesus' heart to have a follower who is a person of focus, commitment, and sheer will. Jesus has no use for a follower who has got other extra commitments and has to keep asking for permission to not do certain things, or someone who has zero motivation, and has to keep being told to do the obvious, or someone who follows Jesus because they want an easier life. Jesus has to keep teaching the self-aggrandizing disciples that there is nothing about themselves that deserve respect, but anybody who belongs to Jesus' kingdom deserves respect because they belong to Jesus. Stop forming cliques within the greater body of followers. You all belong to the same kingdom and serving the same cause. Jesus shows mercy to the Samaritans who do not show hospitality to Him, due to their deep prejudice toward Jews. Jesus puts the overly zealous sons of Thunder in their place. lk 10 Jesus sends out the seventy in pairs. The ones who reject them do not reject men, but God. The miracles done in their presence will become a witness against the ones who reject. With greater light comes greater responsibility to believe. Jesus tells disciples to not be titillated with their new authority to command demons, but to prize their secure future in the kingdom. Jesus bursts forth in adoration for God's revulsion for the arrogant, and care for the helpless. The community within God is exclusive, and nobody can know God unless Jesus chooses to reveal Him. Jesus challenges a lawyer to enter the kingdom through keeping the impossible law: love God and love fellow man. The lawyer, knowing he cannot keep the perfect law, wants to narrow down the definition of people he needs to love, while Jesus broadens the definition to anyone in need. Listening to the Word of God is more eternally rewarding than worrying about party decorations. lk 11 Prayer, first and foremost, is an exercise of the mind to prioritize living for the eternal kingdom, and shaping everything in life around that purpose. Jesus uses argument of "lesser to greater" to dispel any doubt of God's willingness to grant prayer requests, and His knowing what is best. However, Jesus demands as a condition, when making a prayer request, a state of hyper-focus and urgency and audacity that abandons all shame and fear. Spirit's power over demonic forces are blasphemed because the rulers refuse to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus responds to the blasphemy with amazing communication: He does not shy away from addressing head-on the blasphemy. He even repeats what they said, and does not allow them to redact their statement. He not only does not give credence to the blasphemy, but also makes the blasphemers self-reflect by judging them: "If I the Holy One casts out demons by Satan, how do you evil children cast out demons?" Jesus explains calmly that it is illogical for Satan to erode his own jurisdiction, and that His power can only be from God. Jesus gives a warning to blasphemers that they are setting themselves up against God to their own destruction. A morally reformed, religious life without faith in the true God is more demonically controlled than a debauched life. When a woman gives a compliment to Jesus saying, "Your mother is so lucky to have had you as a son!" He has none of it, because He will not accept praise from a heart that prioritizes living a comfortable, temporal life over living for eternal kingdom. Jesus sees the unbelievers' demand for signs is from a sinful motive: only for entertainment in their dull lives. This indifferent generation, who has had a greater privilege of seeing the Son of God face to face, will have absolutely no excuse for not repenting (turning from evil ways, and following Jesus), since people of old have repented by a lesser witness of Solomon or Jonah, who were by no means were insignificant lights. Jesus warns people of learning from false teachers who will deceive you into thinking what you are learning is truth. "Watch out that the light in you is not darkness." The most impregnable prison for the soul is the one that the soul believes is Paradise. Jesus is invited over for lunch with a Pharisee. Jesus lays the heavy blows and pulls no punches on everybody sitting at the lunch table: He tells the Pharisees have righteousness that is skin-deep, while they are bubbling inside with malice and greed. Jesus condemns religious rulers for burdening people with harsh life-restricting rules by using the promise of salvation as leverage, being accomplices in murder of prophets of God, and being barriers for people who want to know the true way of salvation. God will intentionally send more prophets for them to murder so their guilt will increase. The lunch table participants end up wanting Jesus dead for His disapproval of their entire enterprise. lk 12 After all the zealous adherence to the holier-than-thou Pharisaic religion, the best its followers can achieve is a thin veneer of piety, while they are bubbling inside with all kinds of vice. However, Jesus promises a judgment day when every minute thing is recorded and will be exposed. Hence, death is not the worst fate; the eternal lake of fire is. Hence, it is meaningless to seek approval from men. Rather seek after the approval from God. The only way to be approved by God is to be identified with Jesus openly and publicly, come what may. Attributing to Satan the work of the Spirit, who only works to authenticate Jesus, will render the soul, who does, unable to believe who Jesus is, thus sealing his fate. Never become nervous or frazzled when giving a testimony before the world powers. The Spirit will work through you during your heightened sense of duress. Calling Jesus to pick a side in a petty dispute, which is fuelled by an earthly preoccupation and selfishness, is like telling Jesus to His face that you have not been listening to a word He was saying in His sermons. Jesus reiterates those who work only to be fulfilled in this present world only is making an investment that will default after their death. Meanwhile, for those who work for His future kingdom will be provided all their necessities in this life until their work is done. Jesus uses lesser-greater argument to make the point: you are not a walking mannequin, and you are not an eating machine; live for the eternal kingdom, and all your efforts you have made in this life for the building of the kingdom will accrue to your imperishable rewards. Christ encourages His slaves to not grow slack in working for the kingdom until He comes back, which is going to be a time that you least expect, so that their Master may richly reward them in the end: greater responsibility. The unbelievers are also slaves of Jesus, who with the stewardship entrusted to them, do not work for their Master, but use what they have been given in life for hurting others and serving themselves. Their eternal punishment will increase in severity based on how much more they knew of God's will and refused to do it. Christ is a divisive figure, and will cause polarizing effect in all relationships, even rifting through family units. Jesus is perennially preoccupied at the back of His mind with the cup of God's wrath He will drink, which sets His temperament at sombreness by default. Jesus is frustrated with people who are able to connect the dots and forecast future weather based on crude present signs and prepare for it, but who lack the same diligence or willingness when seeing the present signs that point to Jesus as their Messiah, even as God's judgment day draws closer and closer. lk 13 God gives live illustrations of Jesus' teaching in the previous chapter. Unexpected deaths by violence or by misfortune are not God's way of singling out the worst of the bunch, but are a means of warning everyone who is alive that they should prepare. After death, there is no more opportunity for repentance, but only judgment. Jesus tells a chilling parable to illustrate what happens behind-the-scenes when a sinner lives in rebellion against God's word: unbeknownst to the sinner, God starts a countdown after which the unrepentant sinner runs out of his burrowed time. Jesus releases a woman from her disability on the Sabbath, and breaks an arbitrary man-made Sabbath tradition. A supervisor of the synagogue, in which Jesus did the miracle, is so staunch in his devotion to man-made traditions that he remains blind to an indisputable miracle which points to Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus quickly flays the religious leaders for their nonsensical, and arbitrary rules, which only serve to keep their power over the people and make people spiritually miserable. Jesus likens the growth of His kingdom to a humble seed blithely tossed into nowhere, which grows bigger than anyone can imagine. Also, Jesus compares the catalyst for the growth of His kingdom to a hidden leaven, which unstoppably and secretly does its work until it is complete. Even the smallest person can make a difference for the advancement of the kingdom. The disciples are wondering at the dwindling size of the crowd that follow Jesus. Jesus has discouraged followers with ulterior motives. Jesus warns that there will be many at the judgment, who will feign familiarity with Jesus by virtue of their having had some semblance of friendly encounter with Him or His followers, but they will horrifyingly be barred out of the kingdom, which will be filled with all kinds of people, Jew and Gentile. Contrary to the popular Jewish belief, simply being born a Jew does not assure entrance to the kingdom; entering the kingdom takes impossible sacrifice of self: acknowledge one's unworthiness to earn God's favour in any possible way, and willing to live according to God's way (following Jesus) even with the risk of being ostracized. Jesus is undaunted by the death threats from political or religious leaders, and fully trusts in God's schedule for His life. Jesus loves His people so much, that He would rather die at their hands than flee from them; it also has the effect of sealing their guilt. Jesus grieves over His people's rejection of all the past prophets of God, and now their own Messiah, and warns of their coming judgment. He expects a future repentance of Israel when Jesus will come back to establish His kingdom. lk 14 The sect of the Pharisees is the "Back to the Bible" Reformation movement with emphasis on building a stairway to heaven for the "super-righteous" few. They have appointed themselves as the gatekeepers who controls the common people's interpretation of the Bible. They have set up the synagogues to be the education centers to propagate their teachings, in the spirit of Ezra [Ezra 7:10]. The law of God imposes its impossible demand of moral perfection on sinful man, and promises a curse of death if they fail [Dt 27:26]. However, they ignored how sinful they are and how their every thought and deed is sin-tainted [Ge 6:5]. Rather, they chose to be adamant that they could beat the system [Ro 10:3]. For every external ceremonial injunction in the law of God, they made their own hundred additional rules around it, so they theoretically would not even be close to breaking it (but in fact, they completely disregarded the spirit of it, essentially writing it off. For example, they made the Sabbath to be no longer a holiday to be celebrated; it became the most stressful day to be observed.). For every internal moral law that they could not keep, they re-interpreted it so that they could keep it (e.g. they narrowed down the criteria for who is their "neighbour" so they could keep the law "love your neighbour as yourself"). The Pharisees so inextricably have bound their entire fate with their "house of cards" of a system, that if anyone were to try to knock it down, they will go so far as to murder in order to protect it. Enter Jesus, the One who wrote the law. And He is invited on the Sabbath to break bread with some mob of Pharisees. Knowing full well He is walking into a set-up designed to discredit Him, He graciously avails Himself to them, so that He may try to divorce them from their ideology and that they may have opportunity to repent. The Pharisees intentionally detain a man suffering from peripheral edema (for whom they have nothing but contempt, since they believe his illness is due to his sin), and sinisterly "watches Him closely." So proud (so "puffed up", one could say) of what they think they achieved (i.e. creating a foolproof way to secure entry to heaven), the Pharisees openly challenge Jesus to break one of their many made-up Sabbath rules by performing on that day a Spirit-empowered, God-glorifying, supernatural miracle that testifies to His Messiahship. So blindly do they believe in the legitimacy of their own rules (i.e. on par with God's laws), that they want Jesus to perform a miracle, so they could discredit Him. And Jesus gladly obliges, who has come to free people from their false religious system. Their self-righteous system reflects their depraved heart: it is devoid of any love for fellow man, and is hypocritical, and self-serving, and completely violates the law of the loving God [Lk 10:27], and Jesus rebukes them. Jesus observes the Pharisees' self-promotion on display when they seek out the guest seats with the most bestowed honour at the meal table. Sitting oneself in a seat of greatest honour meant they were declaring themselves to have sufficient means to repay the host's hospitality. This social event was not a pure brotherly fellowship out of genuine appreciation for each other; it was a "strings-attached," ostentatious place of commerce for shameless self-aggrandization. Jesus tells the guests what must have sounded totally alien: Declare yourself to be incapable of repaying the host anything, so that when the host asks you to move up to a more honourable seat, you will be seen by all as worthy of true honour (and not because you are wealthy). Essentially, Jesus uses this meal table to teach the Pharisees about humility before God: God honours only the humble. So, be honest before God about your morally bankrupt state and stop trusting in your own artificial righteousness, but seek after the righteousness which comes from God by sheer, unmerited grace [Lk 6:20; Lk 18:9-14]. As for the host, Jesus exposes the utter disinterest in true worship, hence complete barrenness in spiritual life. The host was only practicing hospitality to people of financial means who is able to also reciprocate, because he is ultimately seeking his own temporal benefit. The host was not concerned about pleasing God and seeking honour from Him (hence the eternal rewards), but rather idolatrously pleasing man and receiving only the same free lunch as his reward. This shows that the host has no interest in being part of the future feast of God (i.e. His eternal kingdom), and is only preoccupied with securing ties with men of great social status in this fleeting life because all that is waiting for him in eternity is woe [Lk 6:24,25]. Jesus tells the host: Exercise true gratuitous hospitality to the people who cannot ever repay you back and who you consider to be the worst sinners; and understand that you are only imitating God's grace toward all sinners including yourself [ref. Lk 6:32-36]. If he understands this, then he will know that he can only be part of God's fellowship table as an unworthy sinner himself, totally by God's gracious choice. At this point in their dinner (or lunch), Jesus has significantly dampened the usual drunk, self-congratulatory mood of their dinners, and even the Pharisees who purposely invited Him to challenge Him are beginning to regret inviting Him at all. There is no hiding from this graciously aggressive Light, and there is at least one Pharisee who becomes so uncomfortable with this much sober introspection that Jesus forces upon them, that he tries to re-liven the happy mood by ignoring Jesus and changes the subject by offering a toast that his friends will accept: "Blessed is everyone (i.e. themselves and their most loyal followers) who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" Jesus responds by saying they are dreaming; they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. In their perspective, the kingdom of God is only a small addendum to the rest of the things in life that they deserve to enjoy. And it can patiently wait for them until they are ready to enter it. However, in reality, the gates of the kingdom are shut to idolaters, and the idolaters never want to enter through them anyway. In order to enter it, one must see the surpassing value of God that transcends the value of anything in this boring, mundane life, including themselves; and when one doesn't, the person shows that he has no desire to worship God, but he is completely devoted to his own fulfillment. Jesus warns that this offends God; and when His invitation is so rejected, there will come a time when God will harden them in their self-satisfied rejection, and never allow them to enter (and so they will live out their final days of pleasure, and be cast into eternal hell). One cannot be devoted to both true worship and self-fulfillment [Lk 14:26]. The invitation will extend out instead to the unworthy sinners, including Gentiles who will see the value of His kingdom, and want it more than anything else in life [Lk 15:1]. Jesus however pictures God as the one who urgently seeks after helpless sinners. There is nobody who desires to enter the kingdom more than God does for them. Man does not seek after God; God is the only seeker. Jesus has a massive number of followers, who follow Him because He is a novelty in their mundane life; He is a miracle worker, and He refreshingly breaks the mold of their heavy-handed, self-righteous, Pharisaic culture. But just like the Pharisees who care only for their own inner circle, the hoi polloi were also operating out of self-serving motive. Again, Jesus has to address the idolatrous heart of men, which values its own fulfillment rather than God. Jesus tells them that He is not here to offer them their best life now, but to offer Himself as their only future. Jesus is the kingdom, and He does not accept anyone who does not value Him far above every person in their lives, including themselves. Thus, Jesus sets out a clear qualification for entry: only true worshippers are welcome in the kingdom. "So do not bother following Me if you have not done the honest work of evaluating yourself, to see whether you truly have what it takes to complete the pilgrim's progress. You will only embarrass yourself by following, only to turn back; and I'll also be embarrassed for having a false follower who does not represent Me." Someone who is a disciple of Christ only by name, while having no characteristic of a disciple whatsoever, has as much to contribute to the world as an unsalty salt does. Although an average, half-hearted follower, in their beginning to follow, may be unaware they have already failed to enter, they will eventually realize it as they inevitably give up the kingdom in order to keep what they value more [Lk 8:6-7]. On the other hand, the true followers know who they are; they are very aware of the cost of following Jesus in an evil world, that is, everything in life (i.e. all relationships, all possessions, and their own self-will). But "he is no fool who loses what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose" (Jim Elliot, who became a witness in Ecuador). For someone who has already assigned all their possessions to "expendable" column, the choice to follow Christ becomes a simple one, because they truly have nothing to lose (which especially becomes clear when they're tested). For these, God leads them lifelong through the uncivilized places of temptations, wherein they may prove to God and to the world the surpassing value of Jesus above all the passing pleasures of life, and thereby be rewarded with increasingly greater eternal joy [Lk 6:22,23]; this is both a limited privilege and opportunity from the Lord which they will enjoy no more in the eternal kingdom wherein they will be invincible and will no longer be distracted by sin. Lk 15 Some of the undesirables of society, who possess the desire to enter the kingdom, gather around Jesus, and Jesus gladly receives their company. In so doing, Jesus refuses to perpetuate Satan's lie to them who have been living under it all their lives, that they are too evil to find forgiveness and that God has given them up as lost. The Pharisees observe the cheerfulness and the ease with which Jesus associates with the social outcasts, whom they deem unredeemable, and they disapprove of Jesus. But Jesus will not acknowledge another Satan's lie which men buy into, that they are too righteous to need forgiveness and that God will accept them. And Jesus rebukes them, as is His custom, with 2 simple analogies that start with a variant of "Who among you..." [Lk 5:34; 6:9; 11:11; 12:56; 13:15; 14:5; 14:28; ref. Lk 6:37; 12:57] which they experientially can relate to, in order to expose their logical incongruity of thinking that God -- the seeker of sinners, the Saviour of all men, the gracious God who delights in showing mercy every day -- will not forgive, save, or seek after those whom He has lost to sin. Jesus then equates God's work of salvation with the sinner's act of repentance (i.e. "change of mind" in Greek); one sinner, whose senses are made alive by which to evaluate honestly their needy state before the holy God, will cause the gates of heaven to reverberate with God's joy. But the gates are unmoved for the sinner who is unmoved by God's offer of mercy. A simple footnote to take away from these analogies: Jesus shows that the moral character of God is relatable and knowable to all men, even to Gentiles who do not have the Scriptures. The frightened Gentiles, walking in the darkness of demonic paganism, can take comfort in knowing, solely from their experience of human virtues, that God is at least as compassionate as the most admired virtuous person. However, men can truly relate to God in their human experience, only when they see that God is the Creator whose design in creation is to point them back to His invisible attributes, and also only when they will refrain from corrupting their mind with hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Jesus tells them a third parable, a character study of two kinds of sinners. To drive the point of the first two parables, Jesus highlights God's outrageous compassion and His delight in bestowing outrageous favour upon anyone who boldly throw themselves at His mercy. Jesus tells of one son who makes a series of life choices that goes against every sensibility of how a son should act. Eventually, he suffers the consequences of his actions; he loses everything, and he reaches a point where he is in danger of losing his own life due to starvation. He then remembers his father's house. He then comes to realization that the only way to survive is through his father; everyone else would allow him to die. But knowing what he deserves for his guilt, he cannot ever imagine any scenario that played out at home in his absence other than the one in which his father already disowned him. And returning to his father, in order to escape death, means facing the ire of his family and the community, who would expectedly cast him back out into the wild. He knows he is in no position to demand any favour or negotiate, and he has nothing with which to commend himself. But his choice is simple: face humiliation or face a certain death. And he knows something of his father's merciful character that he starts his journey back to his father. On his way back, he rehearses a formal apology, and a request that will hopefully assuage the scorn of his father and his community: that he may simply work for his father's house to earn money to eke out a living for himself. In so requesting, he hoped to demonstrate his acknowledgement of his despicableness and his refusal to receive anything from his father which costs him nothing; his father's mercy is not cheap and he will work for it. Never occurs to him a thought of impropriety of waltzing up to his father and demanding the entitlement of a son. But the father remains a father at heart, even when his wretched son forgets about him. The father has been vigilantly searching the horizon for the sign of his son's return, who upon seeing the smallest hint of his son's desire for forgiveness, runs the distance to meet where his son is at, fully embraces him as his own (in full violation of social expectations), and heaps on him a different kind of humiliation than the one he was prepared to go through. He does not even allow the son to utter his rehearsed request. The father immediately reinstates his sonship, and throws a lavish, expensive party to celebrate his son's return. The son was right to think his father's mercy is not cheap, but he was wrong to think that he can ever earn it with his sweat; it costs him nothing, because he has no means to ever pay for it. Jesus tells of another kind of son who acts and behaves exactly by the book. In the eyes of the community, he perfectly fits the model of what every honourable son should be. But his external conformity to social mores does not necessarily give an accurate image of an honour for his father, the lack of which becomes evident when his disgraced brother returns, and is warmly received back into the family. He does not share any of the values of his father, making him no different from a stranger to his family. His spiritual estrangement becomes evident when he responds with brooding anger against his father, who generously receives his contrite brother by virtue of family bond. It is the moral outrage of the self-righteous, who would have gladly gloated over the death of his wretched brother. Lk 16 In the hearing of the Pharisees, Jesus continues to flesh out for His disciples what it means to be a disciple: valuing God. This is the same theme as the one in Luke 14:25-35, when He was teaching various kinds of followers that they must either choose the kingdom or this world (because their cultures are at odds with one another; one values honesty, humility, and true worship; the other, hypocrisy, arrogance, and idolatry), and that either choice has a cost (the former, hatred from the sinful world; the latter, eternal perdition). Here, Jesus shows what valuing God looks like in a life of a disciple [ref. Lk 14:33]: it is being faithful to voluntarily use all your possessions, which you consider as disposable, for the purpose of evangelism. Everything you own has an expiry date. You will lose everything you have in this world sooner or later. You are not really an owner of anything in your life. You are only a steward of everything who has a responsibility. Jesus teaches His disciples to live in light of the kingdom. Everything that you have in this world is not your own, but God's. You are only a steward, who will give an account what you have done with what God has given you. And God expects you not to hoard your stewardship, but to use it to the full (because you will lose it all anyway), so that when you enter the kingdom, the people that you helped with your stewardship will accompany you into the kingdom, the people whom you helped in evangelism. The Pharisees scoff at Jesus, the seemingly poor travelling rabbi, who seem to take a shot at them for being blessed by God with wealth. To them, the wealth meant they were faithful, and in no way would they give up their wealth, which shows their status before God. Jesus says looking like you are blessed by God to people is not the same as being actually blessed by God. Wealth is such an idol that hoarding wealth is antithetical to serving God. Judas kills himself, because he feels bad about having done something evil. He finds no repentance, because he does not want to bow before God, and acknowledge His right to judge him. He clearly sees what evil he has done, and that it stinks to high heaven. That it was a form of severest blasphemy. And that this act, he wishes he never did, because this means he will pay the penalty, and that he will forfeit his blessing. And what righteousness he can boast of in himself, even that he has forfeited by violating his own level of righteousness. He wanted a clean break from God, and wanted nothing to do with Jesus, but by betraying Him, he feels guilt. And he does not repent, because he does not want to acknowledge God. He wants to set himself up as the standard of righteousness, but now he sees himself as debtor to God. He knows he is left with nothing. His pride, his thought of making God his debtor, and his idea that God owes him, is broken, because now the scales have tipped. He owes God, and he hates owing to God. He cannot bear his existence of not being able to be free from God totally, and living in a world where God exists, and he has to play by God's rules, so he kills himself. Because his conscience bothers him, and he is bothered by the fact that his conscience bothers him, because he realizes that he knows too much, that he cannot escape Jesus.
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CategoriesAll Discourse Doctrines Gospel Humour NT Commentaries OT Commentaries Tactical Life Date
August 2023
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