God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Jesus came to a growing understanding of his Messianic calling by reading the Scriptures. He had to learn the Bible just as we must. Of course, He is the greatest theologian who has ever lived. His reading of the Bible would have been free from the problems that beset Christians who wrongly interpret passages and bring their own sinful dispositions to the text. Nevertheless, we must not imagine that Christ had all of the answers as a baby and merely waited to begin His ministry at the age of thirty without putting in hard yet delightful work on a daily basis in obedience to His Father’s will. As Christopher Wright notes, the Old Testament enabled Jesus to understand Himself. The answer to His self-identity came from the Bible, 'the Hebrew scriptures in which he found a rich tapestry of figures, historical persons, prophetic pictures and symbols of worship. And in this tapestry, where others saw only a fragmented collection of various figures and hopes, Jesus saw His own face. His Hebrew Bible provided the shape of His own identity.' …He had to study to know what to do. While He was never ignorant of what He needed to know at any stage of His life, He nevertheless was required to learn (Mark Jones).
We live in a world where truth is relative. According to most, there is no absolute standard to determine right from wrong because truth is ever-changing and subjectively suited to personal opinions and popular culture. Most want to believe this because at our core we want to be autonomous without any accountability and restraints. We want to be God. We want to be the sole arbitrator to determine right from wrong. So to bolster support for this driving tendency, many have used the Word of God for their justification. They have erroneously taken Jesus’ words in Matthew 7 not to judge as their shield for critique-free sinful behavior. It’s funny how they use our Lord’s words as a reason not to submit to the rest of our Lord’s words found elsewhere in the Bible! However, such a position is contradictory to the inherent understanding of societal function and clearly a false interpretation of what Jesus intended.
