Last week I went to see a Christian band called The Wrecking, a band that I've been getting pretty well acquainted with over the past year or two. They were opening for another Christian band called Tenth Avenue North. During the show, the lead singer from Tenth Avenue North was talking about how sometimes we see what other people say or do and we think to ourselves "Oh my goodness, I would NEVER..." He says, we really ought to replace "never" with something like "always" or "be very likely to" because every one of us is as mistake-prone as everyone else. It's only by the grace of God that we are clean or even have our occasional good moments.
This concept was apparently lost on the Pharisees in John's Gospel, as they were quite hypocritical in the manner described by this lead singer. Although much maligned in the Gospel, the Pharisees are not this group of people who have a particular disposition of being inherently evil. They are merely representative of certain elements of our own character.
Later on in the show the lead singer said the usual things you expect from a Christian band about how "it's not about us (the band), it's all about God." But then he went on to elaborate further. "We are just the mailmen. God is the sender. When you receive a gift from a loved one through the mail, you don't go and start hugging or bowing down to the mailman who delivered it. That's all we are (motioning to the other band members), we're just delivery boys." Jesus was similarly humble even as He criticized the Pharisees.
John 8: 21-30
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