Focal Passage: Luke 11:37-46, 12:1-3
Nobody likes to be told when they are wrong. Especially when the correction takes place in front of others. When I was in basic training for the Marine Corps, the drill instructors would love to point out my mistakes in front of my fellow platoon members. I think the goal was to teach us to police ourselves, to ensure correction was a normal part of what it meant to be a Marine. It could be that they just liked to yell at us, though. Twenty years later and I am still not sure.
Giving and receiving correction ought to be a normal experience of the Christian life as well. Not in a manner in which we prop ourselves up as better than another, but rather to ensure we are staying on the “straight and narrow.”
In Luke 11:37-46, our Lord is invited to dine with a Pharisee. This is incredible because, at this point in Luke’s Gospel, the Pharisees were very much opposed to the message Jesus was proclaiming. And yet, here we have someone who is still willing to meet with Him. But that is not going to last long.
As Jesus enters to dine with this man, Luke tells us that our Lord did not exercise the custom of ritual washing. What was this ritual washing? The Old Testament had numerous cleanliness laws that were meant to make Israel stand out and be distinct from the nations around them.
While in exile, the Jewish people developed additional rules — or customs — on how to keep the Old Testament laws to ensure they would never find themselves in exile again. They made laws on how to keep the laws. While this may have had a noble beginning, by the time of Jesus’s earthly ministry the Pharisees had elevated these “laws about laws,” these traditions of men, to divine status. That is a terrible place to find oneself.
While the point of this text is predominantly about the danger of legalism and hypocrisy, we can take a step back and notice something else: what a loving thing it was for Jesus to call out this man’s sin. Rather than allowing him to continue in error, our Lord exposed the problem beneath the surface. Some of us, however, struggle to see correction as loving. That is why we also need Luke 12:1-3.
There Jesus warns the gathered crowd about hypocrisy. Why? Because sin never remains hidden forever. Your sin and mine, and the sins of others, will eventually be brought into the light.
An old preacher once said it this way: “Sin will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you are willing to pay.”
This is why believers should not fear loving correction. Jesus did not ignore sin, and neither should we. In the Marine Corps, someone continuing in error can cost a life. In the Christian life, allowing someone to continue in sin can have eternal consequences. Calling out sin is never easy, but when it is done with humility and love, it can be one of the most caring things we do for another person. B&R