Do What?

     “Do what?” I find myself saying these words in a couple of situations. 1) I didn’t hear what someone said. 2) What they said made no sense to me. In the second situation, my “Do what?” means that I need them to explain exactly what they meant by that answer. It’s like situational irony—what they said is not at all what I expected to hear. If you’ve ever played the board game Apples to Apples, you know exactly what I’m trying to say. In that game, “Do what?” answers are the norm.

     Jesus would have been a fantastic Apples to Apples player. He was always throwing off everyone who thought they knew what He was up to—disciples, crowds, and religious leaders alike. Whatever 1st century Jews said to mean “Do what?,” I can imagine that they said it every time Jesus came around. He was the master of irony.

     Luke chapters 17-18 records several of Jesus’s most stunning teachings. Addressed to a diverse crowd of people, Jesus delivered these teachings during the time immediately preceding His coming to Jerusalem. While traveling to that fated city, Jesus prepared the hearts of His listeners (including, by way of Luke’s gospel, the hearts of all who read His story) to understand His purpose, but to do that He deconstructed and eliminated many of their preconceived notions about the Kingdom of God, the identity of the Messiah, and even the nature of salvation. As I read these two chapters, I could almost hear the crowds muttering, “Do what? What on earth does Jesus mean by THAT?” I muttered it quite a few times myself.

     I’ll walk through some highlights of these teachings. Starting in 17:3, Jesus delivered a profound insight on forgiveness. “Be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and comes back to you seven times, saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:3-4 HCSB). That probably wasn’t the answer that his disciples were looking for following Jesus’s assertion that “Offenses will certainly come, but woe to the one they come through! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to stumble” (17:1-2).

     A question we always have to ask is “What’s the point?” Jesus’s point here is not that the people of God be docile and naive church-mice who allow worldly evil to run us over unopposed. Instead, his challenge is even more intense. If “your brother”—suggesting that the individual is a fellow believer, a member of the family of God—sins against you, address the issue and forgive him. Now, if this happens even seven times IN ONE DAY, we are STILL to forgive him. Is there any wound more scarring than a wound at the hands of family? If our enemies hurt us, ok. We’ll pick up and go on. But if brothers, the people we’re supposed to be able to trust with our lives, if they hurt us, how much deeper is the pain? What an issue to address! Yet Jesus again chooses to portray the way of love. Forgive them. So Jesus’s main point was to illustrate unconditional family love, love which covers “a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

     Before Jesus’s death on the cross, could people truly understand the unconditional love of God? Likely not. They could know God’s love partially, such as in the common graces and blessings of life and in the writings of the prophets; however, the intimate, personal death of the Messiah as a substitute for their own sin fully portrayed the limitless nature of God’s love for them. Therefore, in this passage in Luke, the unconditional love that Christ teaches about is a shadow and a model for the love that He was quite soon to fully demonstrate. Did people really understand what Jesus meant at that moment? Likely not. Once Jesus’s redemptive act on the cross was finished, however, I imagine people going, “Oh, THAT’S what He meant. We’re to love like THAT.” This teaching set the stage for people to understand that God offers chance after chance—seven times in one day, if need be—for us to repent from sin and turn back to His love.

     When learning something new about God, we should always stop and ask two basic questions: What is Jesus telling me? What am I going to do about it? (Credit goes to Gateway Church Cleveland for that idea). Otherwise, the temptation is to learn a lot about God but never draw near to Him. I cannot answer these questions for you; I can only say that keeping them in mind will likely lead to personal conviction if you’re a Christian. When we pray those questions, as in ‘Jesus, what are you telling me? What should I do about it?,” we can never be sure of the answer!

     Wow. I’ve written almost 1,000 words on this one teaching. Forgive my long-windedness, but I think I’ll have to divide this post into parts. What I’m learning and seeing from these teachings are just too good to rush! [TO BE CONTINUED] :)

     Today’s prayer place: Phoenix Coffee. 1700 East 9th Street, Cleveland, OH 44114. This is a coffee shop that I’m sitting in right now, and I plan to begin coming regularly. Please pray for good contact. Also, I met a Saudi Arabian guy named Thamer today, and hopefully I’m going to help him practice English. Please pray that God will provide a chance for me to share the gospel with him.