On This Day: Woe to Parenting Children of Hell

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)

 

   Why is it so comforting to hear Jesus speaking to me/us (“the crowd and his disciples”) and telling us what he thinks of the hypocritical influencers of the Jewish religion?

   Because it assures us that HE does not approve! He calls them out. He confronts them as children of hell and declares that their converts are double-dose children of hell.

   To clarify, Jesus is NOT calling us from the double-dose-child-of-hell pendulum extreme all the way over to the double-dose-child-of-the-world extreme. We can’t maintain a stance of “I’m not following Jesus because of all those religious hypocrites in churches” just because Jesus indicts the religious hypocrites for their evil spiritual parenting!

   Rather, Jesus is calling these religious legalists to repentance and faith. He is calling the double-dose converts to repentance and faith. He is calling their world-loving victims to repentance and faith. And if you don’t know which one applies to you, he is calling YOU to repentance and faith.

   When I clued in this morning that the apostle Paul had been one of these double-dose children of hell prior to his salvation, I remembered how I had clued in one day many decades ago to what a good legalistic person I had been during one stage of my journey with God. And it was so subtle. I grew up in a fear-based home where I found safety by doing the right thing so I wouldn’t get in trouble. My faith in Jesus Christ was genuine as far as it had permeated my life. But my “be a good boy” mentality stunted my growth by focusing on doing the right thing externally and expecting everyone else to do the same.

   My testimony is for those of you who have been traumatized by double-dose legalistic children of hell and have either tended to become just like them or swung to the other extreme of loving the world with reckless abandon. Read Paul’s testimony in Philippians 3 (I share it below) and see what an amazing transformation happened in his life when he came to know Jesus Christ for real.

   The bottom line is that Jesus doesn’t want us to go away today feeling smug that Jesus hates double-dose religious hypocrites just like we thought he should. He wants us to see that he has no place for any extreme that keeps people outside the kingdom of heaven, whether it is by shutting the door on those who want to enter, or churning out double-dose disciples who think they are so good they must already be in the kingdom. 

   Instead, Jesus calls us all to repentance and faith so we can know him and his Father in the most real and personal of ways. And if you need help answering the call, just ask.

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

Paul’s testimony from Philippians 3 

4 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.