People with Ears

Jesus repeatedly told His listeners, "He who has ears to hear, let him ear." Notice that there are three kinds of people in that phrase. The first kind is "He who does not have ears." That one can't hear, obviously. The other two, then, would consist of people with ears, divided into those who hear and those who don't. Of course, everyone has ears, so what was He saying? He was obviously speaking of spiritual ears. Paul wrote, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor 2:14). That actually seems rather harsh, but I didn't say it; Paul did. The natural, unregenerate person lacks the ability to understand the things of the Spirit of God. They don't "have ears." That means that there are two types of people who don't "hear" -- who don't listen and understand: the unregenerate and those who can hear but just won't.

I find some interesting examples of people who seem to be unable to "hear" when we look at how they read Scripture. Take, for instance, the famous story of then President Obama quoting Scripture that said that Jesus was "the friend of sinners."¹ As it turns out, the text doesn't say that He was. The context is Jesus complaining that the crowd made no sense. John came neither eating nor drinking and they said he had a demon. Jesus came eating and drinking and they said He was a glutton, a friend of sinners (Matt 11:17-19) You can see that Jesus was saying what they said, not that what they said was true. If we conclude that Jesus was saying it was true, then Jesus was also claiming that John had a demon. We know that wasn't true. So Jesus truthfully stated what they were claiming, but that's not His admission that they were right. Was Jesus a friend of sinners? He was, but not the "Embrace your sin and be happy as you are" type of friend (which, in the final analysis, is no friend at all) like Obama and others think. He was the "Repent and believe in the gospel" type of friend (Mark 1:15). So when people quote Scripture to tell us that Jesus was the friend of sinners, meaning He did not condemn sin, they do it without hearing.

Recently I wrote about the gospel versus the Social Gospel. I offered 1 Cor 15:1-11 as a basic text for what the gospel was. I pointed out that we do need to take care of the poor, the widows, the orphans, the needy, the oppressed -- all that -- but that this is not the gospel; that is a product of loving your neighbor. Well, of course, people took offense. "What about this? Didn't Jesus say, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor' (Luke 4:18-19)? Didn't He include all that in the gospel?" Another example of people who don't hear. No, it doesn't mean that all of that is included in the gospel. Jesus said, "He has anointed Me to proclaim the good news to the poor." He also listed freed captives, seeing blind, and liberated oppressed. In the parallel passage (Matt 11:5) there is another list of good things that are happening to needy people. The text is simply saying that Jesus had come to bring good things to needy people -- healing, liberty (without requiring physical liberty; there is no record of Jesus releasing any prisoners), vision for the blind, release for the oppressed (again, without actually requiring physical release), and the gospel for those who need it. The requirement for blanket equivalence would mean that the gospel is all of those things. That kind of blind equivalence would require that Jesus's "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation" (Mark 16:15) would command that we take all those miracles with us in the basic command to "proclaim the gospel." Those things are "good news," but they are not "the gospel" that we are commanded to proclaim. Look, if that was what "the gospel" entails and you haven't freed a single prisoner or healed a single blind person, you haven't obeyed the command. Or ... that's not the gospel, and some aren't listening.

I've heard people pit Jesus against Jesus. In Matthew's version of the Beatitudes, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 5:3). In Luke's version Luke writes, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20). Clearly Jesus said two different things, right? In one He referenced the "poor in spirit" and in the other it was just "the poor." So, they tell me, the poor -- those who are lacking the basic subsistence requirements of life -- are blessed with the kingdom of God. They completely ignore the Matthew version and it makes no sense. If it is true that those who suffer in poverty are blessed with the kingdom of God, here's what we know. These people should be left alone. They don't need a Savior. They don't need more money or help. They don't need the gospel. They're blessed, and they already have the kingdom of God. What more could they ask? Or Luke's abbreviated version was intended to parallel Matthew's version and Luke's "poor" was a reference to "poor in spirit." "He who has ears to hear, let him ear."

We can be really too free and easy with our understanding of Scripture. We read a verse and make it a soundbite and make it our guiding principle when, as it turns out, the content and context and all of Scripture says something quite different. It is entirely possible for people "without ears" to think they "hear" but don't. It is equally possible that people "with ears" might think they hear but don't. I'm quite sure that all of us "with ears" fail to hear at times. We need to practice (Heb 5:14). We need to pay attention. We need to read. We need to heed. Because not hearing is not a good thing.
________

¹ Isn't it interesting that no one protested the president when he told us that Jesus was the friend of sinners, so we should be also? If Pat Robertson or Albert Mohler or the like had said it, the anti-religious Left would have been outraged. (By "anti-religious Left," I do not mean to imply "All the Left is anti-religious," but that there is a segment, large but not all, that is anti-religious.) "Keep your religion to yourself!" they would have bellowed. Why not when the president said it? Seems odd ... or does it?