Category: Devotional Thoughts

How Are We Justified?

Credit: “The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

When Jesus tells the story of two men who go up to the temple in Jerusalem to pray, He relays two prayers that couldn’t be more different. One man, a Pharisee, prays:

God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. (Luke 18:11-12)

The tax collector, to whom the Pharisee refers in his prayer, is the other person who prays at the temple that day. His prayer consists simply of:

God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (Luke 18:13)

In his prayer, the Pharisee compares himself to other people and judges himself better than them. The tax collector compares himself to God and finds himself infinitely lacking, so he asks for mercy from Him. The Pharisee believes he is like God and unlike other sinners. The tax collector confesses he is utterly unlike God and worse than other sinners.

After describing these two prayers, Jesus declares:

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. (Luke 18:14)

Jesus says that the tax collector, and not the Pharisee, leaves the justified before God. Why? Because the tax collector looked to the righteousness of God to justify him. The Pharisee only looked at the sinfulness of others and justified himself compared to them. The Pharisee tried to justify himself before God by using others. The tax collector realized if you want to be justified before God, you need to be justified by God.

It is far too easy to try to justify ourselves like the Pharisee tried to justify himself by using others. But true justification comes not by using others, but by trusting Jesus. May we find our justification in the right place – which is in the Righteous One.

When Knowledge Isn’t Power

Credit: Karolina Grabowska / Pexels.com

It was Francis Bacon who ostensibly was the first to say, “Knowledge is power.” Whoever actually said it first, it’s been repeated many times – and it’s been believed for much longer than it’s been said.

When Satan shows up in the Garden of Eden, he tempts Adam and Eve with nothing less than knowledge. He tries to get them to eat fruit from a tree that God has forbidden, because it will open their eyes to the knowledge of not only good, but also evil. But Satan says this knowledge will also give them power:

God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:5)

Satan implies that if Adam and Eve can gain the knowledge of God, that will give them power over God. And they fall for it. But instead of gaining power, their new knowledge instead results in death.

One of the wisest men who ever lived, King Solomon, sternly warns against gossip:

The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts. (Proverbs 18:8 and 26:22)

We are still enticed by gossip, however. Why? Because we believe that knowledge about someone may afford us power over someone. From blackmail to shaming to even manipulating someone with knowledge we know about them that they don’t know we know about them, we still believe knowledge is power. But, like Adam and Eve, such knowledge often leads to nothing but death – death in our relationships, death in our trust of another person, and the death of our ability to talk to someone rather than about someone.

Satan gossiped about God to Adam and Eve and look where it led them. There are some things that are simply none of our business. We don’t need to know. In a culture that loves to know, sometimes, ignorance isn’t just bliss; it’s holy. So, let’s reject gossip about others. For by rejecting gossip about others, we can know God better. And He’s someone we do need to know.

God Talking to Himself about You

Credit: The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo (1511) / Wikimedia

When God creates the plants, fish, and land animals in Genesis 1, He speaks to the land and water He has already created to bring these creatures forth:

Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. (Genesis 1:11)

Let the water teem with living creatures. (Genesis 1:20)

Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. (Genesis 1:24)

God calls to the land to produce plants and animals and to the water to produce fish. Why? Because the land is where plants and animals belong and the water is where fish belong.

And yet, when God creates human beings, things change. Rather than speaking to the land, where we will live, God speaks to Himself:

Let us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. (Genesis 1:26)

If the land is where humans will live and belong, why doesn’t God call to the land to bring them – to bring us – forth? It’s because ultimately and in a very unique way, we don’t belong to the land, but to God. We are created in His image:

God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Yes, we will live on the land. And yes, the first man Adam is even created from the ground. But he belongs – and we belong – to God.

This is why Adam’s fall into sin in Genesis 3 is such a tragedy. He goes from belonging to God to wanting to be like God, which shatters his relationship with God. But God does not give up. Through the prophet Jeremiah, He envisions a time when:

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel…” declares the Lord. “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

God will make sure we belong to Him. We will be His people. He will be our God.

God loves you so much that, when He created you, He had a conversation with Himself about you. You belong to Him. And nothing can change that.

On Pet Rocks

Credit: Al Freni / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images

During the Christmas season of 1975, the gift to get was a pet rock. Marketed as “genuine” and “pedigreed,” and sold at $4 a rock, this fad made its originator, Gary Dahl, a millionaire. The fad didn’t last, though, because even though pet rocks are very low maintenance, they don’t do what other real pets do. They won’t purr when you pet them like a cat. They won’t follow you around the house like a dog.

But what if one did?

The apostle Paul summarizes Israel’s journeys through the wilderness when writing to the Corinthians:

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:1-3)

Wait, a rock followed Israel through the wilderness?

Paul is alluding to two stories that serve as bookends for Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness. In Exodus 17, at the beginning of the Israelites’ journey, Moses strikes a rock at Horeb and water pours out of it for the people to drink. Then, in Numbers 20, Moses also strikes a rock, though God had commanded Moses to speak to the rock this time, and water again pours out.

Paul picks up on these two stories and surmises that there must have been one water-filled rock following Israel around through the wilderness. But the real key comes in his identification of that rock: “the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:3). Israel’s rock was much more than just a pet. It was a person – the same person who said:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. (John 7:37-38)

Jesus, Paul declares, followed Israel through the wilderness – providing for them, caring for them, and ultimately, being gracious to them.

When we experience our own wilderness moments – when our souls feel dry and our lives feel difficult – we can rest assured that we have a Rock who follows us into even the driest and most treacherous moments of our lives to water our parched souls and comfort us by His presence.

Our Rock is Christ.

“Was Blind, Which Is How I See”

St. Paul on the Road to Damascus / Flickr

I still remember when I really began to notice and be annoyed by it. It was when I was a sophomore in high school. When my algebra teacher was writing equations on the chalkboard, I couldn’t help but squint and wonder: “Did she just write a 7 or a 9? And is that a 3 or an 8?” At first, I wanted to blame it on her sloppy chalkmanship. But when it wasn’t just my algebra teacher’s writing, but my English teacher’s, my science teacher’s, and my social studies teacher’s writing too, I was forced to admit to myself that perhaps my eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. So, begrudgingly, I trudged off to the optometrist. And I got a prescription for glasses.

I had never paused to think about just how precious being able to see clearly was until I began not to be able to see! So, you can imagine how devastating it must have been for a man named Saul who, while on a trip to Damascus, had a light from heaven flash around him and a voice from heaven speak to him only to find out that, when this supernatural experience was over, he couldn’t see: “Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing” (Acts 9:8).

It turns out that the light blinded him was from none other than Jesus and the voice that spoke to him was none other than that of Jesus. Saul, up to this point in his life, had made it his mission to persecute those who claimed Jesus was the Messiah. He believed that Jesus was nothing but a man who was pulling a scam. But when Saul encounters Jesus enthroned in heaven, his mind quickly changes. He goes from believing Jesus was a fraud to believing that Jesus is God. But it all happened when Saul became unable to see. Paradoxically, this is when Saul began to see Jesus for who He was most clearly.

What was true for Saul is true for us. Sometimes, when we feel like life has gone dark and we cannot see – these become the moments when we see Jesus most clearly. When the darkness of a dreaded diagnosis overtakes us – we see Jesus as our only hope for healing most clearly. When a relationship falls apart despite our best efforts and our hearts go dark – we see Jesus as our only possibility for reconciliation and restoration most clearly. Even when we close our eyes in death and everything we have ever seen or ever known goes dark – this is when we see Jesus as our resurrection and our life most clearly.

John Newton famously wrote that, because of Jesus’ amazing grace, I “was blind, but now I see.” Sometimes, however, it’s not our blindness that must be removed so we can see, it’s our blindness that helps us see. Because when we can see nothing because everything has been taken from us, all we have left is Jesus. And it’s at these moments when we, just like Saul, can truly see – and trust in – Him most clearly.