Sunday 12 May 2013

The Superior



“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18:10-14

Notice that the difference between these two men is enormous. The first one manifests pride, superiority, spiritual blindness, hypocrisy. In the second one we see humility, dependence, his human condition. You can tell me, but that was in the past, is there anyone like this Pharisee?
How many are those who live in this deception of religiousness, always noticing others mistakes so much, that they are not able to see their own.
Or, when it comes to their own errors they always have a justification, but when it’s about others, it’s unforgiving.

They believe to be more spiritual, in deeds and pure, but what she does not know is that by just feeling all of this she is the most sinful of all, because that reflects pride, vanity and worse, judgment.
By believing to be so upstanding, she lives criticizing and pointing out the weaknesses of others, judging without mercy.
Why is it that she focuses on detecting errors? Is it to justify herself?
Friends let us look at ourselves, do not want to take the place of God, notice that the Pharisee who exalted himself so much was humiliated, but the tax collector was justified by his humility.
Think about it! Stop focusing on the mistakes of others and look within yourself, because of wanting to fix others perhaps you are making a greater sin, judging.
“Judge not, that you be not judged.” Matthew 7:1

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Instead of focusing on other people mistakes we rather look at ourselves and we will see we are more in the wrong than the other person as the word says'How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.'Luke 6:41-43

Jennifer V said...

we should be humble enough to examine ourselves without judging or pointing fingers at the next person because to our suprise we will get dissapointed just like the pharisee who wanted to take the place of God by placing judgment on how sinfull the tax collector was.

Anonymous said...

This is true we often see other people mistakes and we cannot see our flaws, we should see within ourselves and only worry about ourselves.

Candy Skhosana said...

Dear mrs Tania
It is true no one is perfect, before we can point at other people's mistakes we should look at ourselves. The Bible say's in the book of Luke 6:41 "why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?". If we are not humble enough to recognise that we are sinners and we try to act superior we will not enter the Kingdom of God.
Thank you
God bless you

Unknown said...

Thank you for sharing
This is really important. We should realise that we are not perfect and we cannot expect anyone to be perfect. So we should focus on working on our own imperfections instead of judging others

Meredith said...

Sometimes the more a person grows in their faith, naturally people would expect them to become stuck up but spiritually speaking we would expect them to be growing in humility

I think it depends on the individual whether they allow it to make them proud or truly recognise their not better than anyone

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