Envy and fear. As I read Matthew 27, I was struck by the reasons Jesus was passed to and from Pilot, the Roman governor. Pilot looked for a way to release the innocent Jesus by offering one “get out of jail free” card to either Christ or the much-to-be-feared outlaw, Barabbas. Pilot “knew that because of ENVY, they had handed Him over.” Apparently, the ‘religious’ couldn’t stand that this young renegade was causing people to no longer follow them. That He was releasing souls from slavery to ‘their’ law, into freedom and true relationship with ‘their’ Yahweh. While these leaders taught, “Thou Shall not kill,” they simultaneously plotted murder – because of envy. Envy drove them to release a hardened criminal that day and made them willing to allow their children to bear the guilt of Jesus’ innocent blood. Envy comes from a word that means ‘to corrupt, decay, destroy’ and it does things to us – none of them good. Out of envy the Jews handed Jesus over to Pilot; and, out of fear Pilot handed Christ right back over to them. Warned not to become involved, and seeing that the riotous crowd could not be reasoned with, a fearful Pilot washed his hands of both Jesus and of justice. But that was then – what about us? When we see God working through others, do we encourage them to be as effective as they can be? Do we look for ways to partner with them? Or do we become envious and look for ways to shut them down because we may not be receiving as much attention from others that we once did? When others need our support and protection, do we allow our fear of a potentially hostile crowd to cloud our judgment, impact our decisions, and keep us silent while justice is crucified? Father, remove our envy and our fear of men. --Dave
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 11:00:00 +0000