Intro: This past Wednesday evening during our Chosen Bible Study, we watched a video about meekness—defined as controlled strength under pressure. Meekness is the inner attitude of the heart—of our mind/will/emotions—which expresses itself outwardly as strong, active, courageous, restrained and never self-aggrandizing. Evil and sin will always arrive to disrupt our meekness, because Satan wants to move us away from a posture of humility, trust, forgiveness, and a fear of the Lord.
In our passage from Luke today, Jesus is teaching about perpetuating evil—those who encourage others to sin against God. Certainly, we all sin and fall short of Christ’s glorious standard; sin is the spiritual malady of the human heart that seeks to live without the fear of the Lord. We all need to take a meek position with each other. The temptation to sin against God, others, or ourselves will exist until Jesus returns; so, forgiveness is essential.
When someone is living with the spiritual illness of the heart, he or she tends to want others to join him or her in that sickness. Misery loves company and many times Jesus addresses the Pharisees about how they are leading God’s people to join them in their spiritual malady rather than living to please God. For this reason, Jesus casts a very vivid picture of what will happen to those who are given spiritual authority but mislead God’s family away from the truth. Sorrow awaits.
So, let’s just think for a moment about how our faith must lead us toward forgiveness, because we are commanded to forgive. In the Body of Christ, we will need to forgive one another over and over again. That means we must be quick to repent, apologize, and recognize our own sin before fixating on the sin of others. So, before we get upset with a fellow brother or sister in Christ and try to point out their sin, let’s make sure our action is based on meekness and our purpose is to restore another in relationship to God.
Luke 17:1-4 NLT Teachings about Forgiveness and Faith
1 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! 2 It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin. 3 So watch yourselves!
“If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive. 4 Even if that person wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, you must forgive.”
Prayer: Lord, thank you for this lesson on meekness. Help your children to be bathed in quiet strength and to have the right attitude about our personal sin, as well as the sin of others. Sin is wrong and we must help one another rise above it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.