Paraphrase: (07/09/11)
Mt 23:23, Lk 11:42 Woe to you, you hypocritical scribes and Pharisees! So meticulous over every least scruple, practically obsessing over your tithing, and yet utterly negligent of the greater themes of the Law: practicing justice, demonstrating mercy for others, living out fidelity to God. These are matters you should be attending to without losing sight of those others. Mt 23:24 You are blind guides to God’s people! You carefully pour your drink through a strainer lest there be a gnat found in your cup, yet you swallow a camel without even noticing!
Key Verse: (07/09/11)
Mt 23:24 – You strain out the smallest impurities, yet you blithely partake of the greatest of sins.
New Thoughts (07/10/11)
There is not a great deal that need be said on this passage. The main point is sufficiently plain. Mechanical obedience, outward obedience, is of no value. Only the inner obedience has meaning. Motive is ever the point for the believer, and Jesus stresses this: Love as you ought and all the rest will just naturally flow from that source. True obedience must consist in heart and soul. True obedience is a function not of habit or slavish devotion to some set of rules or another. True obedience is of the character.
This point is perfectly clear and well established in the overall arc of the Gospels. There is, however, a secondary point that we ought not to lose sight of. Were it a verse unto itself, I should likely have chosen it for the key to the passage. But, as it is contained together with the plaint, I shall extract it here for my focal purposes: “These are matters you should be attending to without losing sight of those others.” This is the counterbalance to that which is rejected. This is the weight imposed lest we swing too far in the opposite extreme in our efforts to avoid the Pharisaic error.
The two poles on display are those of legalism and antinomianism. On the one hand all of life is reduced to the minutia of scrupulous though often pointless observance of a system of norms. On the other hand is the supposition that every last rule has been eliminated and the believer is perfectly free to do whatever he pleases. This view takes messages like the ‘all things are clean’ of the preceding verse in Luke’s account (Lk 11:41) and seek to detach it from its surroundings. But, this we must not do, and what I hear in the words of Jesus on this matter of tithing ought to suffice as clarification on that matter.
Yes, the Pharisaic tendency that is common to the religious, it seems, in every age (even the antinomians if one watches them closely enough), tends to strip one of all concern as to the real and core matters of faith, which are ever matters of character. On the other hand, there is something about those observances that remains praiseworthy or at least has the potential for being praiseworthy. This attentiveness to tithing: There is something there. There is, at least back in its origins, a healthy concern for being certain to heed the law of God. If I look at Leviticus 27:30, I can easily see where this practice arises. “All the tithe of the land, its seed and its fruit, is the Lord’s. It is holy to the Lord.” If God declares it holy, exclusive to His use, then certainly, I do well to treat it as such. I do well to make certain that I do not lay hold of what is exclusively His for my own mundane appetites. And, so long as this is the mindset that propels me to obedience, there remains a very certain value in my actions. However, that Pharisaic tendency is as constant in promoting a certain negligence as to inner estate as it is in promoting such outward compliance. The tendency is to devolve towards lip-service, toward keeping up appearances but losing all real connection with God and faith.
If, however, I jump so far from this position as to deny the binding nature of God’s command in any fashion, if I attempt to make the claim that because Jesus fulfilled the Law I am thereby freed to summarily ignore it, then I am doing great violence both to the accomplished work of Christ and to His message. Indeed, I am doing great violence to myself, for I am training myself to think very little of God and of His holiness. If I cannot accept the Law He has laid out, the Law by which He describes Himself to us as much as He defines His expectations of us, and I determine that I don’t need to worry about keeping sacrosanct that which He declares holy unto Himself, then I eventually wind up applying this same lazy perspective to myself. Remember that critical piece of the high priest’s garb, that medallion on the headdress which proclaimed, “Holy Unto the Lord”.
This is to be our own estate as children of the Most High! If we would but regain a greater concern for His holiness, if we were restored to a recognition that this holiness means reserved for His exclusive use, how would we then discern the course of our own days? Listen! This is so important! We, as the people of God, as the children of God, are declared His own. As servants of the Most High, we are marked out as holy, set apart. Just as the high priest in his day, we are declared as being sacrosanct and reserved for God’s use exclusively. We are not our own! (1Co 6:19). We have been designated as temples of the Holy Spirit, He Who abides in us. We can see from history how seriously God takes the purity of His temple, and how severely His anger burns against those who do not share this view. What, then, must this mean for us? We are a people upon whose foreheads blaze the words, “Holy Unto the Lord”. It is thus He sees us as He looks through the blessed filter of the Christ. And, through that filter He sees us in our final state, in that perfection He Himself has wrought in us. But, that does not relieve us of obligation and responsibility in this life. We are to be working out our own salvation (Php 2:12), not as those who think we can attain to that lofty goal in our own power, but as those in full recognition that God is at work in us, so moving upon us as to empower us to both will and work in full accord with His good pleasure (Php 2:13).
In short, we dare not become so caught up in the details of outward compliance that we allow ourselves to slip into utter disregard for matters of character. Neither do we dare to become so negligent of the things that define holiness and sanctification that we give no care whatsoever for the shocking reality of God not only with us, but in us. We are priests in the temple, and our hours of service are never at an end, for we carry that temple of God within ourselves and we are therefore in constant service before His altar.
I have quite probably hammered this point sufficiently, but let me continue. Grace does not eradicate obligation. Knowing that God is in perfect and absolute control, knowing that He has laid out the so called coincidences of our lives, does not in any way excuse us from our moral obligations in navigating the course of life. He has told us what is good, and the clear purpose of having done so is that He expects us to do as He has told us. Yes, there is that aspect of the Law which, as Jesus drove home the point, is intended to make clear to us just how desperately we are in need of a Savior. The Law must impel us to a recognition of our guilt before a holy God, if we are looking at it aright. This is true. But, we are not thereby granted release to abandon all thought of compliance. Rather we are compelled to hold more firmly to the anchor of faith, to seek that much more of our Lord’s powerful presence in us, in order that we might draw nearer the standard He has set.
Notice that Jesus, in directing our greater concern towards matters of character and essence, does not abrogate the observance of command. You should be focused on these things without neglecting the others. You should be more concerned with your character, your inner estate, that which is being rebirthed and renewed within you. But, a true regard for these inward matters will by no means be found demonstrated in neglect for the outward. When Micah, speaking for God, declares that God has told us what is good, and proceeds to list the fundamental requirements God has set upon us, there is a clear expectation that we will, if we love God, do our utmost to meet these minimum requirements: Do justice. Love kindness. Walk in humility before God (Mic 6:8). It would be difficult to miss the echo of that list in what Jesus speaks of as the weightier provisions of the law. “Justice, mercy, faithfulness.” It’s the same list.
We may not quite see the correlation between humility and faithfulness, but they are most assuredly congruous. We cannot be faithful in our character except we walk humbly before God, allowing His say and His hand upon our lives. Neither can we walk humbly before God except we be developing a faithful nature, a trustworthiness that seeks as best it may to be worthy of the God of all Faithfulness.
Lest I become overly confident in my progress, I shall set before myself the test that John provides. “Whoever has the worldly possessions and seeing a brother in need yet closes his heart against that brother, it’s not possible that the love of God abides in such a one” (1Jn 3:17)! Am I there yet? I have my doubts, and those doubts certainly ought to prompt me to concern. That is not to say that I should therefore rush out and find some down and out brother and make his support my central concern, even to the hurt of family. Neither is it to say that I shouldn’t. But, I am not called to slavish pursuit of some compliance that is not set upon my shoulders. I am called to this, and to this alone: To act without compunction at the first hint of God’s command upon me. I am called to be a servant of God, not a servant of outward forms. The forms are to reflect God within, not to seek Him from without.
God, I’ll admit that I do still find cause for concern when I consider the test John sets out here. I find concern because I find little enough of mercy in me. I find a lack of compassion that must cause me to cry out before You, for it leaves me feeling a bit short on Your presence in me. It does not, thank You for this, lead me to suspect that perhaps I have been deluding myself all these years, that this salvation I say You have brought to me is but me fooling myself. But, it leaves me longing for a greater work, a nearer approach to the finish line. I am too easily led into the ways of the Pharisee, Lord, and I must needs depend the more upon Your blessed working upon me to keep me upon the Way You choose. My need is plain before me, my failure to easily seen. Yet, my failure is but a place where You are still at work upon me, and I, to the best of my ability, set myself once more in a place of malleability under Your gentle and sure hands.
