Luke 17: 1-4
17 Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. 2 It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 So watch yourselves.
“If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.4 Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Jesus is the BETTER forgiver
Jesus ALWAYS rebukes those who sin and enables us (makes us able) to live lives that please God and fight against sin.
We don't always rebuke sin in our lives and in the lives of others well. We are very tolerant of sins in our lives and make excuses to justify ourselves while being very judgmental and brutal with sin in other people.
Jesus ALWAYS forgives all those who repent and enables us to be reconciled to God
We don't always forgive ourselves well and we don't always completely forgive those who have hurt us in ways that lead to a reconciled and healed relationship. May perceive how Jesus has forgiven us in a way that opens up a completely reconciled and healed relationship with God and live it out in our relationships.
Luke 17: 7-10
7 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”
Jesus is the BETTER Servant
Jesus is the only servant who obeys God's orders perfectly.
Jesus is the only one who has properly done his duty in God's eyes.
May we rest in the service Jesus has performed on our behalf. May we rest in the fact that Jesus has served God in the way we could not serve God. We could not and will never perform well enough to please God.
May our love for God and relationship with God be rooted in the fact that Jesus loved us more than we love God. May we see that the ways we love God only for what He gives us and not for who He is are sin.
May we see that through Jesus' birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection, he pleased God and now God welcomes us when we are IN Jesus...not on the basis of our own performance or our own attempts to serve or please God.
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