SOMETHING OR SOMEONE?

(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)

Jesus didn’t live a domesticated life.

That’s what scared the religious leaders most about Him. You see, He couldn’t be tamed. They never knew what He was about to say or do. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get Him to adapt to their rules, their ways, their ideas.

Even unto death on a cross, they never broke Him. They couldn’t even change Him, or get Him to compromise His beliefs for one solitary second.

The freedom He had was something His generation had never seen or experienced.

The Jewish people’s lives quite literally revolved around rules and regulations. They knew no other way of life. All their plans were made with “religion” in mind. The religion of their day had caused them to live domesticated lives.

Not Jesus. In fact, He caught a lot of grief for His lack of attention and special care to their man-made religion.

Remember when He healed on the Sabbath? Oh boy, they believed that was a sin beyond forgiveness!

This freedom is a key component in the life of Christ that I believe we often fail to take note of today.

Perhaps, because we have a tendency to fall into the same way of thinking and living as the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, we ignore this freedom thing.

For Jesus, it wasn’t about religion, it was about being obedient to His Father for the sake of winning souls and indwelling them with the same Spirit He had.

After all, where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17). Are you getting this?

The last thing Christians should be doing is living domesticated lives if we are indwelled with the same Spirit Jesus had and came to give us.

In Matthew 23:25-28 Jesus tells the religious leaders, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

What breaks my heart is that they rejected Jesus as King, and in doing so, they rejected the very freedom their souls desperately needed.

We must come to the realization that God’s ways bring freedom, not when we simply believe that they do, but when we implement them and live by them daily, knowing that it is for our own good and ultimately God’s glory.

If the religious leader’s example does not cause us to fall upon our knees in humility before Jesus and reflect, then we have missed one of the most important points the Gospel writers were trying to express. When we read of Jesus conflict with the Pharisees, we must become reflective and ask the Lord to reveal areas of our own life where we might be guilty of similar behaviors and/or attitudes.

Everybody’s chasing something because they don’t know they’re chasing someone.

Oh Christian, don’t chase religion when you can have Jesus Himself.