Reflect on This



Picture from: http://mtcministry.wordpress.com

The closer Jesus got to the end of His life, the more the Pharisees seemed to hassle and question Him.  The result is that Jesus teaching toward them became even harder.  In Matthew 22:16, one of the Pharisees' disciples comes to question Jesus about taxes.  Before he asks Jesus his question, though, he makes an assertion that is true, profound and challenging.  In a nutshell, the Pharisees' disciple states that Jesus has shown Himself to be who He says He is regardless of what others say or think.  He goes on to state that Jesus is no respecter of persons.  What that means is that it does not matter where a person is from, what they look like, what they do for a living, or how they dress, Jesus treats them all the same.

As I read that verse this morning, I was deeply challenged in my own faith walk.  How many times have we asserted that we are to be like Christ to people?  How often have we heard from pulpits the necessity of reflecting Christ in our community?  I've heard it and I have preached it.  All of that aside, the question remains, are we living it?  I want to spend some time today unpacking the assertions of this verse and what impact it has for our daily life.

You are True

Jesus is who He says He is.  Can the same be said for me?  To be true, we must walk in truth.  What that translates to for us as disciples of Jesus is that we are to walk in the Truth.  Jesus makes it very clear in John 14:6 that He is the Truth. So for us to walk in the truth, we are to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Paul adds to this in Galatians 5:25 saying that as we are in the Spirit (or as the Spirit is in us) we are to keep in step with the Spirit. To be true, we must stay rooted in the truth.  An additional way that we are to do that is to be steeped in the Word of truth, which is God's word.  If we, as Jesus' disciples, are not spending time in the Scriptures daily, we are missing the mark and standard that Jesus has set for us.

You Teach the Truth

Jesus was uncompromising when it came to teaching God's Word.  But His teaching extended beyond just the words that He said into the way He lived His life.  We've long heard it said in the church that we may be the only Bible some people ever read. That points directly to how we live our lives before an unbelieving world. If our life does not match the words we speak concerning Jesus, then we have missed the mark that Jesus set for us.  When we teach the truth about Jesus, we must live out that truth as well.

You Don't Care

When our lives are intensely focused on Jesus, His opinion is the only one that matters.  At this point in Jesus' ministry, there were many detractors, but He was unfazed by them.  He continued to carry out His life's mission - to seek and to save that which is lost.  As His disciples, we must live our lives in the same way.  Too often we are overly concerned by what others will say or think.  We cannot be concerned with the things of the world.  If we are concerned with the things of the world, that means that our focus is misplaced there instead of on Jesus.  When we care more about what people think as opposed to what Jesus thinks ,we have missed the mark that Jesus has set for us.

You are Unswayed

Jesus was not swayed by the status of those around Him.  He brought low the high and elevated the low.  He leveled the playing field for people.  He was not impressed by titles, symbols, incomes or gadgets.  People were people to Him.  If there is one thing that we must learn from Jesus as His disciples, it is this.  Often we get caught up in who people are or, worse, who we think we are. People are people. It does not matter if they are rich or poor, powerful or powerless. At the heart level, people are all the same.  If we treat people differently because of an external appearance, we have missed the mark that Jesus has set for us.

These words have challenged me deeply. They will cause me to think and live differently.  They have brought into perspective the life that Jesus expects me to live as His follower, and that is crashing into life.