Jesus Rebuked

What Did Jesus Do?

Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea
Matthew 8.26

As I write this morning the sound of immoderate rain showers outside my window reminds me of the severe flooding caused by storms that ravaged several states last weekend. If only those rains could have been rebuked as effectively as the tempests on ancient Galilee! And there is every reason for Christians to rebuke such threatening weather, after all, Jesus did.

Jesus rebuked, and that means we should be, well, rebukers. Unfortunately, too many Christians go around perpetually rebuking and condemning everyone who isn’t like them, and everything that doesn’t suit them. That kind of rebuking attitude isn’t biblical, and it certainly isn’t Christian. Jesus himself stated plainly that the Father did not send Him to be a rebuker who condemned the world, but to be the world’s Savior. (John 3.17) Christians are supposed to be part of Christ’s saving work, but too often the world perceives us as rebuking and condemning.

The Bible records Jesus rebuking the weather, as cited above in Matthew 8 (Also Mark 4.39 and Luke 8.24), rebuking unclean demonic spirits (Matthew 17.18; Mark 1.25; 9.25; Luke 4.35, 41; 9.42), rebuking Peter for not accepting that Jesus had to go to Jerusalem and be crucified (Mark 8.33), rebuking a fever (Luke 4.39), and rebuking James and John for being, well, too rebuking of a certain Samaritan village (Luke 9.55).

But there is only one recorded instance of Jesus actually instructing His disciples, which includes us if we claim to be Christians, to rebuke, and it has to do with sin. Not the sins of the world, but the sins of a brother (Or sister), a fellow believer. (Luke 17.3) In other words, it is not so much the world that we are to rebuke, but ourselves. And the bottom line of the passage in Luke 17 is not even about rebuking, but about forgiving. Would that the world knew us better as forgivers than rebukers! And the fact is, discomforting as it is for us, that with respect to the rebuking of sin, Jesus has made it very clear that we need to make sure we rebuke our own before we start to rebuke the sins of another. (Matthew 7.1-5; Luke 6.41-42)

None of this is to say that there is not much in the world worthy of rebuke, or that we should look the other way when another sins. But a rebuke is not the same thing as a winsome call to repent and be forgiven. The Lord came, as He said, to save the world rather than to condemn it; we therefore need to have the right perspective on forgiving and rebuking. The promise of forgiveness precedes the practice of rebuke on the path to salvation. That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4