PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: Matthew 23:13-15
What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?
“You make them twice as much a child of Gehenna as you are.” (v.15)
God comes through Jesus to make us children of ‘heaven’.
That is, to once again live WITH, LIKE and FOR God as image-bearers.
This has always been God’s plan, and what God desires for and from us.
This is what makes Jesus’s warning here so serious.
These graciously restored children of God are NOT doing this.
Though they have been radically graced, they have become ungracious serpents.
And they are working overtime to reproduce more ungracious serpents.
Gehenna was a dump outside of Jerusalem that represented God’s judgment.
It was where the worst of the worse were buried, under God’s judgment.
People who lived cruel, unloving and selfish lives were destined for there.
As graced, much-loved children of God, we need to reproduce this gracious love.
God-like love needs to be the expectation in our Jesus communities.
We need to become twice as much children of love as those before us.
Am I growing in grace, and helping those I serve become children of grace too?
Lord Jesus, this warning is also an invitation, to become twice as much a child of heaven, graced and gracious… like You, like God!