Amazing Grace, Not!
Scripture
“What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?” No one said a word.
~Mark 3:4, MSG
Quote
Religion makes a man self-righteous, proud, unyielding, and judgmental: Jesus makes us servants.
~Ya’akov
This is not the first time I have blogged on this text but the Message enabled me to see the story is a better light. Can you imagine being in the audience that day: Jesus is the synagogue [place of worship]: He has the floor and he called the man with the crippled hand to come forward and stand in front of the congregation. Then Jesus asks the question above…What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?” Jesus had a distinct advantage: He knew His Father’s heart in a perfect way and He knew the hearts of those in the congregation is a perfect way. Due to what is revealed in the word of God, we have a good idea of what is in God’s heart and what is in mans but we don’t know either the way Jesus did. Jesus knew that the Pharisees were rigid, hard, void of compassion and sitting in judgment but He healed the man anyway because of His own compassion. He did the right thing even though it ticked them off.
The answer to Jesus question is not hard: it is rather obvious. The reason no one answered was not due to the difficulty of the question, it was due to their guilt. They knew in their hearts that they were not merciful. Jesus put them on the spot and it made them angry. I got news for all the religionist, their cold and hard hardheartedness made Jesus angry. The Greek word is orgē and it indicates an emotional response that cannot be hidden. Jesus sternly looked them in the eye and there was anger in His eyes. I might add that Jesus got angry on about four occasions to my knowledge and in every case it was anger directed toward the Jews for their pagan religiosity.
The bottom line is simple: Jesus is not please with us when all we do is judge and find fault with others–this is exactly what the Pharisees did and it made Jesus angry. For Jesus sake, we are to have mercy on the hurting and those who have been battered by sin. Jesus did not get angry with the woman taken in adultery: He got angry at the crowd who wanted to stone her.