Are youhaving trouble with how someone has treated you or someone close to you? Here’s a question that came to me this morning in facing my own quandary along these lines:
So how does my attitude or reaction to that person stand to help them get to know Jesus or get to know him better?
In absolutely everything Jesus thought, said, or did in all his actions or reactions (private or public) he had one objective: to help each person he encountered get to know God or get to know God better.
Matthew 20:28 — “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Galatians 5:13b — “…through love (helpfulness) serve one another.”
That singularity of motive behind everything in one’s life is what the Bible means by having a “pure heart.”
The opposite of a pure heart is a hard heart. A hard heart harbors conditions that must be met before it will serve (help) someone whose behavior it disapproves of.
And such is the power of the cross that it alone can break the grip of hardness on our hearts and set us free to be pure in heart. Why? Because at the cross we meet God forgiving us of all our own human weakness and frailty whereby we ourselves have acted in ways we now condemn in someone else.
Romans 2:1 — “You are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge practice the same things.”
In other words, none of us “gets it right” so on what grounds do we look down on anyone who’s not “getting it right” towards us? We have no excuse for our attitude.
Matthew 5:7 — “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”
