Judges 4-6

Luke 4:31-44

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” 
—Deuteronomy 6:5 

Some of us may be familiar with the saying, “hate the sin and not the sinner.” Yet, it is interesting to note that this quote is not found anywhere in the Bible. We cannot separate the sin from the sinner. Although God does not love sin, He does love the sinner; God does not judge sin, but He does judge the sinner. In a brief report published in The British Psychological Society, a study was done on convicted offenders in prison, where each prisoner had to rate themselves in comparison to the average prisoner and to the average member of the community. About 80% of prisoners rated themselves as better than the average prisoner and the average member of the community. These people were found guilty of committing a crime, but they believed they were good.

In reality, the safest people in the world are people who know they are sinners, but woe to the person who is deceived in thinking highly of themselves. In the New Testament, this was the case for Judas. In his comment when Mary of Bethany poured expensive perfume on Jesus, he asked, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” (John 12:5). Although it

seemed like Judas had concern for the poor, John tells us in retrospect: “He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Judas was on his high horse about giving to the poor, but he was the most crooked of them all. Another way of restating Judas’s response is, “It is a waste to be extravagant in your relationship with Jesus.”

We may consider Judas’s life and believe we are not like him, but would we take a moment and reflect on what our relationship with Jesus is like?

A man came to meet me in the church office one day and told me his son was throwing his life away because he wanted to go and serve God in a certain part of the world. He said, “I have invested in my son’s education for better things than this. Would you please encourage him to stay with his job, earn a good salary and then he can send money to that part of the world?”

When our life is about our comfort and our pleasure, where is the extravagant love for Jesus? Like Judas, we may be deceiving ourselves. As recipients of God’s kindness and grace, how can we be extravagant in our love for Jesus?

Dear God, forgive me for deceiving myself. I ask for You to take away anything in my life that directs my heart away from You. I want to love You extravagantly.