Luke13:10 ¶ One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, 11 he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!” 13 Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! 14 But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.” 15 But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? 16 This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” 17 This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did.
Religion was hung up on when this was done and could not rejoice because it did not line up with all the details prescribed for Sabbath worship. They hid behind their holiness excuse.
Unless we walk in the grace we are given by faith and thus begin to see things with new eyes we will have no other choice but to subject who God is and what His word declares about Him to our everyday experiences, and our traditions.
We begin to impose on Him what we believe He is like based on what has happened good or bad to us.
His word gets robbed of speaking out into our lives because our lives impose upon it what we want it to speak.
We can read over and over again how we are the righteousness of God in Christ and how are lives are hidden with Christ in God, but it will have little to no effect on us.
Jesus told the religious leaders of his day that they were blind leaders of the blind. They thought they could see and therefore they could not see. They even had the boldness to call Jesus on the carpet when they felt he was stepping out of bounds with the law of righteousness according to how they interpreted it.
I’m sure they felt they were being good watchmen in doing so. But Jesus called them blind because they could not see the Father being revealed. They could not see things from the vantage point of grace.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, if any man is in Christ He is a new creation and the old things have passed away, behold everything has become new.
About The Author
- Tim Atchley
- Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
- I currently serve as Senior Pastor of Harvest Church in Knoxville, Tn. I was sent out from Trinity Chapel of Knoxville in 1993 accompanied by my wife Sheila our four children Sarah, Hannah, Josiah & Isaac and a handful of bold, brave and committed believers determined to plant our first church. Pioneering is hard work but well worth the journey. That is why we desire to make disciples of Christ who will, like us, also embrace the call to plant churches.
