Looking Beneath the Surface

Meditations for Seeking the Life in Christ

The Gospel of John 

July 30, 2024

Looking Beneath the Surface

Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly.

John  7:24

When Jesus spoke during the Festival of Shelters (John 7), he exposed two character flaws in our fallen human nature. The first is our tendency to establish rules and boundaries as a means of self-justification. The Jews had established hundreds of rules to govern how to take a Sabbath rest, all of which missed God’s purpose for them. God gave us a Sabbath rest so that we could take time to reflect on how we were living our lives. In the previous six days, did we love the things God loves, did we do the things God does, and did we humbly walk in harmony with God? By the time of Jesus, the people of God had reduced this simple period of self-examination and rest to more than six hundred rules, some as silly as whether one could tie their shoelaces on the Sabbath.

The religious leaders didn’t take well to Jesus pointing out the flaws in their elaborate means of justifying their position. That’s the second flaw Jesus exposed, and as with self-justification, we still struggle with it today. Politicians and bureaucrats spend more time justifying themselves, and using their power to silence their opponents, than they do fulfilling their actual responsibilities.

I wonder what we would have heard, and how we would have responded, if we had been in Jesus’ audience in Jerusalem during the Festival of Shelters. As for me, I am hearing how I desperately need to “stay in the grace of today” (Wm. Paul Young, author of The Shack). I need to live by grace, and by grace alone. Any reliance on rules and regulations will quickly draw me into the devil’s snare of self-justification. I must remember that God saved me by his grace when I believed, and I can’t take credit for this. My salvation is a gift from God; it is not a reward for the good things I have done, so I cannot boast about it. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

My Takeaway: When I am seeking self-justification, I fear and react with hostility to those who have different opinions, ideas and thoughts from me. I am not able to then deal gracefully with those who think differently from me. The opposite of self-justification is what God desires for our life: “this is what (God) requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). 

Sē’lah

My book on prayer,

First Think, Then Pray

is now available on Amazon Kindle.

 

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

 

Copyright © 2024 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.