Today we see Jesus fighting with the Pharisees in his classic fashion - he is essentially calling them out as not being as virtuous as they want to tell themselves that they are. They are telling him that they are Abrahams children, but he is pointing out that they are not living up to Abrahams standards and instruction. Therefore, they can’t possibly be his children and, by extension, cannot be God’s either. The thing that really stands out to me, which Jesus is pointing out, is that they are not interested in “the truth“. Yesterday we dissected three verses that talk about truth and how truth is realized in God‘s world; that we act as God asks, we then come to understand his wisdom, and then we will understand the truth. The problem with these Pharisees is that they ultimately are not acting the way God had asked. The law they are most concerned with is their own law not God’s. God‘s law helped them originally form they are beliefs and their rituals, but now they are cleaning to a vision of a Messiah and a God that doesn’t exist, and they are not open to the truth. Interestingly, some of them evidently recognize the hypocrisy under which they are living, that’s probably why someone like Nicodemus became a “convert“; he noticed the inconsistency and was humble enough to step back, step out, and consider a different direction. as we have talked about though, it costs us to do that; it takes a lot of humility and courage to do this because there was a lot of power, and a lot of money, involved in being a leader.

Yesterday’s passage is really a prelude to today’s; the Pharisees were the keepers of the truth, they knew God‘s word better than anyone, yet the truth eluded them. It eluded them because they didn’t implement it. Now, it is easy for us to point fingers at them, but actually implementing the law that got handed down through Moses was an impossible feat anyways. So, they didn’t fail because they couldn’t execute it, the failed because they changed the rules of the game and made themselves and their traditions their own gods.

The take away for me today is that I need to abide in God‘s word as it has been given and need to waste no energy I’m trying to find loopholes or other “outs”. Just do the work, that should be my mantra. If I’ll do as God says, I’ll see as God sees… If I abide in his word, I’ll become a disciple of his and I will know the truth, and the truth will set me free. It’s that same hard/easy idea from yesterday that Jesus is teasing out today in front of these Pharisees and myself.