Congregational Bible Experience Day #18: Luke 5-6

As Jesus teaches (5:1,2,15,17; 6:18-49) and prays (5:16; 6;12) and heals all who gather around Him (5:13,17 6:18-19), so from among the thronging crowds Luke tells us of individual lives that are transformed as His Word comes powerfully home to them. The routine of their everyday lives is totally disrupted as Jesus calls them from their fishing boats (5:11) and tax offices (v28) to follow Him.  Such is the authority of Jesus over them that we read twice that they "left everything and followed Him".  As we follow Jesus, most of us will stay in our fishing boats, our offices, our utility rooms, our milking parlours, our hospital wards, our classrooms, our kitchens, factory floors and fields.  But Jesus' prior call upon our lives, over everything we are and everything we do, is just as real, just as authoritative as it was over Simon and Levi.  We don't just try to squeeze Jesus into our already busy lives. He must be at the centre, and everything else - family responsibilities, job, commitments, hobbies, even church activities and service - must flow from our primary and governing relationship with Him.

Similarly, those who truly follow Jesus as believing disciples must not try and squeeze Him into the pattern of their already existing religious lives, customary rules and expected practices.  That's the essence of Jesus' warning in His "new wine in old wineskins" metaphor (5:36-38).  For, once again we see the Jewish religious experts getting worked up about Jesus and His disciples' failure to maintain the standards of what was considered as good religious practice: fraternising with "sinners" is not questioned but encouraged (5:29-32); the pious practice of fasting is spurned (v33); and the religious laws regarding strict Sabbath observance are repeatedly (and deliberately?) flouted (6:1-11).

It all goes to show that real saving faith in the Gospel changes everything.  Disciples of Jesus do not simply become more intensely religious or earnest in their observance of man-made regulations and rituals, which was what Pharisaism had largely become.  While Christians do not at all play loose with God's laws since they reflect His character, the driving energy towards Christlikeness comes from a Spirit-empowered, transformed heart that desires to please God and to put Him first in all things.  Now, the priority is no longer on mere external conformity to prescriptive laws, but on cultivating a Christlike character from the inside out.  Hence the need for new heart-centred teaching that focuses on such concerns as love (6:27-35), mercy (v36-37), forgiveness (v37-38), hypocrisy (v41-42), character (v43-45) and Christ-pleasing obedience (v46-49).  These qualities cannot be lawfully demanded.  They can only come from lives that have already experienced, and are presently being transformed by the love, mercy, forgiveness and grace of Jesus.