Year 7, Day 220: Luke 11

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Luke 11 has much to say about the state of things.  The area that much of this chapter focus upon is the inside versus the outside.  Another way of saying this is motivation versus action.  Jesus cares more about the motivation and the inside than He cares about the action and the outside.  Of course, I’m not saying that Jesus doesn’t care about the outside or our actions.  I’m simply saying that Jesus truly cares far more about hearts that are after Him even if they make mistakes occasionally than He cares about the person who looks completely put together and yet cares nothing about God and His ways.

The most obvious place here is the conversation about the eyes.  Jesus tells us that the eyes are the lamp to the body.  He tells us that when our eye is pure, we are full of light.  Yet, when our eye is evil, we walk in darkness.  In other words, our actions will follow our being.  If we are pure on the inside, we will tend towards pure deeds.  It is our insides that guide our actions, not our actions that determine our insides.

Or, take the story about the unclean spirit who returns.  A person who finds deliverance in the hands of Christ has an opportunity to overcome sin and that which oppresses them.  However, we cannot leave our insides clean yet empty.  We cannot allow ourselves to feel God’s cleansing and not begin to fill ourselves with righteous thinking and behavior.  If we feel God’s cleansing but don’t fill ourselves with His purity and follow Him in His ways, we will find ourselves right back where we started.  In fact, Jesus tells us that not only will we be right back where we started but we’ll actually be worse off!  We need to make sure that our insides are following God and our hearts are not only receiving His grace but actually inclined towards Him and becoming more like Him in thought, word, and deed.

Or, take the accusation of the Pharisees in the last story.  Jesus is accused by them for not going through the ritual washing prior to eating.  In turn, Jesus looks to them and accuses them of doing all the things that appear righteous on the outside without filling their insides with righteousness.  He calls them whitewashed tombs.  In other words, He is saying that they look pleasing on the outside but their insides are really just places of death.  Once more we hear Jesus indicate that the status of the inside is more important than the status of the outside.  Better to have mistakes in our life but be genuine in our pursuit of God than to appear perfect but have no relationship with Him or anything righteous.

The last example I’ll lift out of this chapter is the obscure passage regarding the woman who tries to bless Jesus’ mother because she bore Him.  Do you hear Jesus’ response?  He says, “blessed, rather, are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!”  In other words, the woman is claiming that Mary was great because she bore Jesus.  If Jesus is great, then Mary must be great, too.  But Jesus calls that line of thinking out.  Jesus says that one’s proximity to greatness doesn’t make us great.  What makes us great is our pursuit of God, His Word, and His ways.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think Jesus is trying to slam His mother, here.  I believe Jesus is not tackling the issue of how great Mary actually was.  Remember, God chose her for a reason.  What Jesus is attacking here is the evaluation of greatness.  The woman evaluates Mary as great for the wrong motivation.  That’s the point here.  Greatness comes from within and our pursuit of God.

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