Category Archives: John

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The Wheelbarrow of Ruthless Trust

Being With Jesus:
John 14.1 (NLT)

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.”

In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning tells the story of ethicist John Kavanaugh, who traveled to India to work with Mother Teresa in “the house of the dying”. Kavanaugh was searching for what to do with the rest of his life, so he asked Mother Teresa to pray for him that God would grant him clarity. She refused, saying, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh protested that Mother Teresa seemed to have such great clarity, she responded, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.”

Manning goes on to say that it is trust—the simple but ruthless childlike trust that we place in God—that is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. I agree. That is what Jesus called his disciples to in the first century—to trust in God, to trust in him—and that is the challenge that Jesus lays down for his would be followers in our age.

No matter how you slice it, the basic minimum requirement for following Jesus always comes down to this: Will you give him your total trust? If you will, you are on your way to the most exciting and rewarding experience of life a person will ever have—walking with Jesus. And from what Jesus said in John 14:1, we can deduce that one of the basic blessings of placing our trust in God is trouble-free heart. Not a trouble free life, mind you, but a heart (and a mind, Paul adds in Philippians 4:7) that is guarded by Jesus himself.

However, if you won’t give God your total trust, your Christian experience will never get out of the harbor and set sail on the rewarding voyage of risky discipleship. You will find yourself nursing a troubled heart and travelling a less than satisfying journey with God.

“Trust in God,” Jesus says, “and trust in me.” So are you? When your faith is boiled down to its basic elements, will we find there, in spite of life’s circumstances and in scorn of the consequences of living out your faith, a simple but ruthless childlike trust in God? Or is trust something that merely gets talked about but never fleshed out?

A lot of people talk about trusting God, fewer people actually place the totality of their lives in the Father’s hands and unequivocally say, “into your hands, I commit my spirit. May your will be done.” If you are one of the courageous and committed few who do, you have given the greatest gift a human being can place before the God who has everything—the rare trifecta of extreme dependence, radical faith and resolute obedience. Nothing brings a smile to the Father’s heart like that.

One of the best examples of this kind of ruthless trust came from the life of the famous tightrope walker, George Blondin. In the 1850’s, for a publicity stunt, Goerge decided he would walk across Niagara Falls on a rope that had been stretched from one side of the falls to the other. Crowds lined up on both the Canadian and American sides to watch this unbelievable feat. Blondin began to walk across, inch-by-inch, step-by-step, and everybody knew that if he’d make one mistake he was a goner. He got to the other side and the crowd went wild. Blondin said, “I’m going to do it again.” And to the crowd’s delight, he did. Then, to everybody’s amazement, he crossed again, this time pushing a wheel-barrow full of dirt. He actually did this several times, and as he started to go across one last time, someone in the crowd said, “I believe you could do that all day.” Blondin dumped out the dirt and said, “Get into the wheelbarrow.”

In a very real sense that is what God is saying to you and me. Our talk alone is cheap. At some point, we need to get in the wheelbarrow of trust and prove that our discipleship is real.

“Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it. … Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic.” (Brennan Manning)

Getting To Know Jesus: Pray this honest and humble prayer: “God, I trust in you. Help my lack of trust!”

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Unconditionally Loved

Being With Jesus:
John 13:2,38 (NLT)

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus… “Very truly I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!”

It is hard to fully fathom and completely embrace God’s immeasurable, inexplicable, crazy love that is revealed in this moment as Jesus washed his disciple’s feet. The story, which connects us to Jesus’ final hours before his sacrificial death on the cross, begins with this shocking statement in verses 1-2: “Just before the Passover Feast, Jesus knew that the time had come to leave this world to go to the Father. Having loved his dear companions, he continued to love them right to the end.”

What makes that so shocking is that Jesus knew full well that not only would his love for these disciples not be reciprocated, there were two in that group who would publically deny him and actually betray his love: Judas and Peter. Verse 2 goes on to say, “It was suppertime. The Devil by now had Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, firmly in his grip, all set for the betrayal.” Verse three adds, “Jesus knew…” what the Father had put before him. In verse 38, Jesus responds to Peter’s promise to stand with him through thick and thin, “Actually Peter, the truth is that before the rooster crows, you’ll deny me three times.”

Now with that in mind, let’s go back and explore what “full extent of Jesus’ love” looks like in what Jesus did in that intimate setting for his disciples—and more importantly, by extension what he did for you.

For one thing, the full extent of his love means you are fully loved, when from a human perspective, you aren’t fully lovable. Verse 2 says, “It was time for supper, and the devil had already enticed Judas to carry out his plan to betray Jesus.” Verse 11 adds, “Jesus knew who’d betray him”; that Judas would hand him over to the Jews later that night. I don’t suppose we could think of anyone any more unlovable and unworthy than Judas—yet Jesus loved him nonetheless.

He humbly knelt as Judas’ servant to wash his feet, knowing everything in his past, present and future, yet Jesus still showed him the full extent of his love! What that means is that if Jesus loved Judas, then knowing everything about you—past failures, present junk, future sin—he’ll still stubbornly love you. If Judas was worthy of love, then certainly you’ll always be the object of Christ’s unstoppable love. In fact, you don’t have enough sin or darkness to even slow his love down! You are fully loved!

That leads to another thing that you ought to know about the full extent of Jesus’ love for you: It is a love that is rooted in his nature, and is not dependent on yours. Verses 4-5 say, “Jesus got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel he had around him.”

Now think for a moment about those whose feet he washed. Of course, there was Judas, whose betrayal Jesus knew was just moments away. But there was also one he knew would deny him—in spite of that one’s insistence otherwise. And of course, there were ten others around that room he knew would desert him in his hour of greatest need before the night was out.

Not their character—nor yours—motivated his love; no, it flowed out of his. That’s why you can always depend on being the recipient of the full extent of his love.

Finally, what you ought to know about the full extent of Jesus’ love is that it will transform your worst nature so radically that you, yourself, will become a conduit of his love. Jesus said in verses 34-35, “So now I’m giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I’ve loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you’re my disciples.”

That’s what the “full extent of his love” will do—if you let it! Again, that love flows from his character, not yours, but when you surrender to it, you can then enter what will be your most satisfying experience in life—to yourself becoming a conduit of his full love to others.

And that is the answer to the deepest longing of your innermost heart: To know the full extent of God’s unconditional love and become the conduit of that inexhaustible love to others!

If nothing could stop Jesus from loving Judas and Peter, certainly nothing will prevent Jesus from showing you the full extent of his unconditional love.

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.” (Brennan Manning)

Getting To Know Jesus: Take some time today to enjoy God’s love. And if that is hard to imagine, just visualize in your mind Jesus, arms stretched wide as he hangs on the cross, saying to you, “I love you this much!”

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What Makes You Blessable

Being With Jesus:
John 13:17 (NLT)

“Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.”

If we are going to be the kind of Christ-followers that God can bless, our behavior will have to align with our beliefs. What we “know” must become what we “do.” Specifically, we will have to live like Jesus lived, which means serving like Jesus served. Jesus made that perfectly clear when he said,

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. (John 13:13-15, NLT)

So how did Jesus serve? Well, an entire book could be written on that, but among the many characteristics of the servanthood of Jesus, he was simply available to people. And thinking about my own life and the lives of most people I know, my sense is the critical need for most of the people who will read this devotional is reorienting their busy schedule to make serving Jesus by serving others the top priority in their life.

Think about how Jesus did that. Matthew 20 tells the story of Jesus walking to Jericho when some blind men start yelling at him: “‘Lord, have mercy on us!’” And it says, “Jesus stopped and asked. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’”

Now think about that: Jesus stopped! God turned aside to make himself accessible to those society had cast aside. Jesus did that a lot! Do you realize that most of Jesus’ miracles were interruptions? What we see as intrusions, Jesus saw as invitations—an opening in his schedule to serve God’s purpose by serving God’s people. If you and I are to grow into a Christ-like ministry mindset, that is the attitude we will have to cultivate. And here is what that means:

First, we will have to realign our crowded calendars. Matthew 6:33 says, “More than anything else, put God’s work first and do what he wants. Then the other things you want will be yours as well.” What that means is that if you will make God’s concerns your priority, he will make your concerns his priority. In other words, that will make you blessable.

Second, we will have to refocus off of ourselves and onto others. Philippians 2:4 says that in becoming like Christ, you have to, “forget yourself long enough to help other people.” That is truly the preeminent attitude of Christ-likeness. And it is one of the things that leads to a truly satisfying experience of life—giving yourself to others. Again, that is what will make you blessable.

Third, we will have to relax our perfectionism. Too many Christians wait for perfect circumstances to serve: when life isn’t so hectic; when the right ministry comes along; when other stuff gets done first. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.” Christ-like servants do the best they can with what they have for Jesus today. Like Jesus, they are available when the opportunity presents itself! By definition, a servant makes himself available at all times to his master, and that is what will make you blessable to the only Master that matters.

Jesus served because at the core of who he was there was a consuming desire to connect people with the grace, mercy and love of his Father. Serving was the primary means of that. Since, as a Christ-follower, you are being transformed into his character, that must be characteristic of you, too.

God has made—or more accurately, remade you—to serve him by ministering to others. Actually, “you are God’s workmanship, made to do good works that God himself has prepared in advance specifically for you to do.” (Ephesians 3:10)

Interestingly, and quite deliberately, the Greek word in that verse the Apostle Paul chose for “workmanship” is poiema. We get our English word poem from that. You are God’s poem, and when you serve in the mindset of God’s Son, you’re poetry in motion.

And when you do, you are at your most blessable!

“Just as a servant knows that he must first obey his master in all things, so the surrender to an implicit and unquestionable obedience must become the essential characteristic of our lives.” (Andrew Murray)

Getting To Know Jesus: There is one vitally important question you musts answer after you have been saved: Where are you loving God by serving others?

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The Delightful Demand Of Discipleship

Being With Jesus:
John 13:14 (NLT)

“Since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet.”

If you are going to be a fully devoted follower of Christ, you will have to think, do and live like Jesus thought, did and lived—not the least of which is to take on the attitude, exhibit the actions, and live the lifestyle of a servant. Yes—you will have to serve as Jesus served!

Serving is what Jesus did because servanthood was at the very core of who Jesus was and why Jesus came. The Gospel of Mark, the first written biographical account of Jesus, sums up the life and ministry of Jesus with this simple, clear and compelling mission statement:

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

Fleshing out this mission statement, John 13 presents the servanthood of Jesus in action in the most unusual and unforgettable way: He washed his disciples’ feet. Then, as he completed this humbling task, he said to them, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:15, NLT) It is abundantly clear from this passage, along with other Scripture, that serving is an unmistakable, unavoidable demand of discipleship. Not only is serving a demand, but when we look at Jesus’ example, we find that serving is also a delight. It is what makes us bless-able: “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT)

Think about it: Serving like Jesus is what puts you at your Christlike best!

You are called to serve! Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-7, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God…took on the very nature of a servant.” Galatians 5:13 says, “Serve one another in love.” If you are serving, you are fulfilling your basic Christian calling. If you are not, then you are not!

You were created to serve! Like a fish swims and a bird flies, a Christian serves! Ephesians 2:20 states, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Before you were even conceived, God laid out specific plans just for you. You are not an after-thought; you do not just exist; you are on this earth not just to be a potted plant, you were born not just to consume, but to contribute. God deliberately shaped you to serve his purposes, which means that he has placed an important responsibility on your shoulders that only you can fulfill.

You contribute to the Body of Christ when you serve! God specifically created you, converted you, and called you to contribute to the life, health and mission of a local church. Paul taught in I Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Verse 12 says, “The body is a unit, though it’s made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” Verse 18 says, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” Why? Verse 7 tells us it is “for the common good.” I Peter 4:10 says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” Perhaps you didn’t realize this, but as you and others serve in your church, serving becomes the primary means of others receiving God’s grace. Your serving is the conduit of God’s grace to those around you.

You capture the world’s attention when you serve! Our humble, authentic acts of service put God in a good light. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. (Matthew 5:16, NLT) Jesus said John 13:35, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples: That you have love for one another.” It is by authentic servanthood that you become living proof of a loving God.

Jesus ended the washing of his disciples’ feet by issuing this very simple challenge: Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT) Is doesn’t get any clearer than that!

“When God wanted sponges and oysters He made them and put one on a rock and the other in the mud. When He made man He did not make him to be a sponge or an oyster; He made him with feet and hands, and head and heart, and vital blood, and a place to use them and He said to him, ‘Go work.’” (Henry Ward Beecher)

Getting To Know Jesus: I have one simple question for you: Where are you serving?

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The Polarizing Jesus

Being With Jesus:
John 12:37 & 42 (NLT)

Even though He had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in Him… Nevertheless, many did believe in Him, even among the rulers…

Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote, “As the centuries pass, the evidence is accumulating that, measured by His effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet.” His was also the most polarizing life ever lived. Now in our day, perhaps in his day too, to be polarizing is neither an endearing trait nor a winning strategy to get you to the top. But Jesus didn’t care; his mission was to save souls (Mark 10:45), which required him to unflinchingly preach the truth, prove his ministry by mighty miracles that often collided with the established rules of religion, confront sin and ultimately die as the only sacrifice that could redeem fallen man and set him right with Father God.

To that end, Jesus pulled no punches. And you either loved him or hated him. That was the case here in John 12:37-50. Some people heard his teaching and discerned a level of grace, truth, love and spiritual authority they had never witnessed in human teachers before, and in Jesus, this was the Messiah they had been waiting for. Others heard his teaching and saw his miracles and believed he was the Messiah, but because they were more concerned with maintaining their standing with the Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus, kept it a secret. And then, of course, there were those who hated him so much they were willing to do anything to kill him off—despite the outstanding miracles they had seen with their own eyes.

Love him or hate him, Jesus forces that choice upon you. As C.S. Lewis said,

“[With Jesus] you must make a choice. Either He was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman, or something worse. You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.”

And yet while people are still curious about Jesus in our day, far too many are still trying to ride the fence about a man who did his best not to give us that option. I have heard people say, “Oh, Jesus, yeah…he’s a great prophet…he is a marvelous teacher…he’s really something. The guy turns water into wine, feeds thousands with a few loaves and fishes, cures sick people. Man, this guy is something.”

Untold thousands of people, the rich and famous as well as the poor and unknown wear the cross as their jewelry of choice, the symbol that identifies him more than any other. Athletes, politicians, movie stars and rock and roll icons whose lives are incongruent with his teachings invoke his name with not a second thought about who he claimed to be. I’ve talked to young men dressed in starched white shirts and ties at my front door who come in his name yet deny his deity. I see raunchy entertainers spew filth in one breath and claim Jesus as a good buddy in the next breath. I have good friends and close family members who acknowledge the historical Jesus, yet ignore his teachings and claims. I have witnessed to people who claim to believe in him as a great moral teacher, worthy of deep respect and honor, but certainly not worthy of the Lordship of their lives.

It is amazing what we have done with Jesus! Dorothy Sayers, a brilliant writer and Christian thinker, once mournfully remarked, “[We have] very efficiently [clipped] the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him as a household pet fitting for pale curates and pious old ladies.” That he is not, by his own claims:

To know him was to know God. John 8:19 says, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.’”

To see him was to see God. In John 12:45, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

To believe him was to believe God. In John 12:44, Jesus taught, “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me.”

To receive him was to receive God. Mark 9:37 says, “Whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

To hate him was to hate God. John 15:23 says, “He who hates me hates my Father as well.”

To honor him was to honor God. John 5:22-33, “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.”

When you consider these claims Jesus made about himself, you have to eliminate most of the nice-sounding, politically correct things people say they believe about him. In other words, he cannot be just a good teacher, just a great moral leader, just a respected prophet, just a great figure of history. There is no “just” with Jesus. It is true, he is the most polarizing figure ever—and he wants it that way. You either love him, hopefully, or hate him. There is no middle ground.

Jesus cannot be de-clawed, nor can he be tamed or even be contained! No matter how people may try, he is still the Lion of Judah! As Josh McDowell wrote, the evidence of his life and teachings demands a verdict: He is either Lord of all…or he is not Lord at all!

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (C.S. Lewis)

Getting To Know Jesus: Is Jesus Lord of all your life? If he is, then affirm that before him in prayer and before the people with whom you will interact today. If he is not, then bow before him now and surrender your life to him as your Lord and Savior.

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Dying To Live

Being With Jesus:
John 12:24-25 (NLT)

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.” (The Message)

Thanks to Adam and Eve’s original sin, the unlimited promises of God as well as the unrestrained potential of man was forever changed—and not for the better. What God had in mind for human beings on Planet Earth was irreparably damaged, if not forever forfeited, as the corruption of sin took root and infected the DNA of all mankind. Sin knocked us off course on the journey of unending favor with no hope of a course correction.

Until Jesus came! Jesus came to get us back on track: to set us right with God and reestablish within us and among us the Kingdom life—that which was intended to be ours before the fall of man. But this gracious offer of a course correction would have to be done his way and not ours.

Easier said than done! Sin had thoroughly altered our relationship with God—no longer did we intrinsically trust him, immediately obey his commands and innately step out to do things his way. No longer would we naturally, courageously and joyfully follow the Shepherd’s voice. You see, our sinful flesh had entered the picture and stood as a constant heckler to the voice of God as Jesus called us back to the path of Divine favor and unleashed potential.

And the persistent stubbornness of our sin nature, aided by the Evil One and fallen world, caused us to balk at the gracious invitation to be set right with God. Instead of naturally seeing Christ’s call for what it was—an unmerited opportunity for never-ending, ever-increasing restoration—we now saw as an illogical and dangerous blind leap into the abyss. Such was the blindness caused by the flesh, the devil and the world. The logic of God we now considered upside down.

Yet the fact remains, what Jesus said and what he called us to do is really a right-siding of the logic of God, now corrupted in our minds by sin. In God’s universe, to recapture the promises and potential or the original intent, we must die to the old for rebirth into the restored. If we hold on to the corrupted life we now know in the flawed system in which we now live, we will kill any chance of that life being infused with untainted, indestructible Kingdom life. The old way—the sin-tainted flesh—has to die and get put into the ground in order to spring forth as the reborn sprig of Kingdom life. The old selfish nature has to get transformed, so that it gives away in order to get what God desires to give. It has to serve in order to surge into Kingdom greatness. It must learn to step into the thin air of risky faith in order for the bridge of blessing to be built under it. It must lose, as the flesh defines winning and losing, in order to win, as God defines winning and losing.

It doesn’t make sense when we look at it through the shortsightedness of our sinful humanity. But when our focus is corrected through the vision of unquestioning trust and complete confidence in Jesus, the path to the Kingdom life once again becomes clear and straight—and what appears illogical to the fallen world now only seems logical. We can see clearly now, and suddenly the fog of sin opens up the pathway to the indescribably beauty of life restored in Christ.

And we wonder, what took us so long to trust the only One who truly knows the way.

“God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.”
(Abraham Heschel)

Getting To Know Jesus: Here is a prayer to counteract the human logic that keeps us from experiencing the Kingdom life Jesus wants to restore to us: Lord, you were the servant of all. You came not to be served, but to serve and to give your life away in order to ransom mankind. You died so that I could live. Help me to take on that selfless, Kingdom-focused mindset. May I be so deeply and profoundly touched by you that, like you, this becomes the essence of my fundamental being.

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Church-Going Devils

Being With Jesus:
John 12:8 (NLT)

“You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

To call someone a “Judas” is to label them a betrayer of the worst kind. It is an accusation that is reserved only for the worst kind of relational offense, since to call another Judas usually implies an irreparable breach in the relationship. After all, who wants to have anything to do with a backstabbing betrayer?

Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, to paraphrase Franklin Roosevelt, is an act that will forever live in infamy. But what Judas did to Jesus didn’t make him evil, it only revealed the evil that had, like cancer, been eating away at his character for a long time. The fact is, in Jesus’ own words, “one of you [disciples] is a devil!” (John 6:70). That is, Judas was a devil of the worst kind: a church-going one. As Joseph Hall has said, “No devil is so dangerous as the religious devil.”

As you might imagine of someone who would betray the Lord, this notorious disciple exhibited some other character flaws that mostly go unnoticed in light of his more famous sin. In this account here in John 12, we are told that Judas protested Mary’s act of anointing Jesus with expensive perfume because it could have fetched a handsome price at the market, and money from the sale could have been used to help the poor. Of course, Judas had a hidden motive. Since he was treasurer for this small band of disciples, he apparently dipped his hand in the till from time to time to fund his own needs. Judas was not only a betrayer, but according to John he was also a thief.

Yet as the Gospels are prone to do, there is another side to Judas that is uncomfortably close to so many people who sit beside you every Sunday in the pews of your church. They are the ones who, like clockwork, criticize everything from the room temperature to the sound level to the length and content of the sermon to the unfriendliness of the people to the call for financial commitment, ad nauseam. No matter what, they are never satisfied; there is always a better alternative—and although they are quick to protest, their solutions are never quite clear or doable. In truth, rather than wanting change, they simply want to gripe. They may smile and sing and put a coin or two in the offering plate, yet they are unwitting tools of Satan. The great Swiss theologian Karl Bath was speaking of them when he said, “The devil may also make use of morality.” They are very spiritual devils!

It wasn’t only Judas that Jesus had in mind when he uttered this gentle but pointed rebuke, “for the poor you have always”, he was speaking to the legion of church folk who believe their gift to the church is the ministry of criticism. In truth, their chronic criticism betrays a deeper agenda and uglier issues of character.

Don’t get me wrong—constructive criticism is not a bad thing, if offered in the right spirit, and conflict that is resolved Biblically and in a Christ-like spirit can actually strengthen the church. It is chronic criticizers that I am talking about. In truth, they suffer from the Judas Syndrome: not betrayal, not thievery, but destructive criticism is their sin.

So here’s the deal: If you have to be around someone who suffers this sort of Judas Syndrome, lovingly confront them, as Jesus did. If they don’t see their sin and change their ways, establish some boundaries with them. Don’t let them poison you and cripple your church.

And most of all, don’t be one! Just remember, no one has ever built a statue to a betrayer, a thief, or a critic.

“The devil loves ‘curing’ a small fault by giving you a great one.” (C.S. Lewis)

Getting To Know Jesus: Are you guilty of covering your own character flaws and deflecting Holy Spirit conviction meant for you with destructive criticism of others? If so, you may be guilty of the Judas Syndrome. Ask the Lord to show you where you need personal reformation. Then ask him to give you the courage to deal with issues that are keeping you from greater obedience and usefulness to him.