What if it’s not about what we should do but what God is doing?

Every day we’re asking four questions about part of the Bible. Today Bern Leckie answers:

What did I like about today's passage?

These stories expose a massive difference between people’s approach to religion and God’s approach to loving us. I love how Jesus dealt with the popular false idea (addressed in the Bible many times) that people get what they deserve, and if someone is suffering, it’s because they did something wrong. If you want the lengthy, painful account of how people insist on this and God answers mysteriously, take a deep breath and tackle the book of Job.

Jesus’ answer is much shorter but still shifts the focus from what we do to what God does. This is A Good Thing because, as Jesus demonstrates, even religious people can be spiritually blind, missing God when he is right in front of them. But I love how Jesus shows, not just talks about, how God wants to heal all kinds of blindness. This means that one man’s eyes can heal, and many more people can see and believe that God is at work among them.

What else is God doing? Jesus describes how he is gathering and leading people who recognise his voice. Being described as sheep doesn’t seem flattering or desirable to people in our culture today (“wake up, sheeple!”) but I love how Jesus is not talking about a system of domination and control. He describes himself as a shepherd who leads through trust.

“I am the good shepherd,” said Jesus famously. I love the way his picture of shepherding looks like someone who loves and cares, respecting the people in his society who did one of the hardest, loneliest and most thankless jobs. But I’m amazed how high he sets the bar for what counts as “good”.

Dying for his sheep? That seems above and beyond the job description. It reminds me that Jesus is talking about goodness and love which far exceed our expectations of ourselves and each other. This is what God is doing – supplying self-sacrificial love which will change everything. If we try and assess Jesus’ demo of this in terms of what we think we can do, we’ll meet the impossible looking barrier of death itself. But Jesus doesn’t want us to worry about what we can do; instead, we should marvel at what God can do. This is where life is.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God wants to show us a different way of life in which we are not centred on ourselves but on him. When we live like this, following Jesus’ lead, God will show us things we missed, even if we had belief in his existence and practiced religious things religiously.

Jesus describes his purpose as having come so we “may have life, and have it to the full.” God’s intention is for us to be healed, go from blindness to seeing, and enjoy the freedom that comes from knowing that we can be forgiven and not get what we deserve.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

Thank God more for what he is doing and look for his lead to shape what I do next.

Who am I going to share this with?

My family.