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When Disobedience Is The Higher Law

When Disobedience Is The Higher Law

Christ's compassion was prophetic. He went to the source of suffering and dealt with it, and often, He had to go against the laws of the time to exercise His acts of compassion.

We find this in an account in the Gospel of John where He healed a man who had been sick for 38 years. The lame man was lying near a pool of water. When the waters of the pool were stirred, therapeutic powers went into action, and the sick who entered the water was healed. The man was sick, the treatment was free and within sight, yet he could not get it.

Why not? He explained to Jesus that he did not have anyone to help him into the water when it was stirred. No one cared for him.

Jesus told this man who had not stood for almost four decades to pick up his mat and walk. He did! But it was the Sabbath. In Jerusalem, you can forget whether it was Tuesday or Thursday, but no one forgets the Sabbath, and on this holy day, it was forbidden to carry one's mat as it was considered WORK. The Jewish religious leaders were too keen to enforce the Sabbath legislation because they wanted to please God.

It was not by mistake that Jesus used this powerless lame man to challenge an uncompassionate society by a deliberate act of defiance. God had provided the stirred-up pool of water for the healing of this man. It was the social pool of stagnant, selfish society that needed to be stirred up for the man's healing. 'Stirring the pool' was precisely what Jesus did.

Jesus sought to open His disciples' eyes by a brilliant act of civil disobedience. The healing incident in the above was not an isolated incident; it was part of Christ's pattern. He knew this would be seen as work on the Sabbath and therefore a deliberate act of defiance of the religious laws. Yet, He did it. His compassion prodded Him to defy the religious laws of His time.

The Old Testament records the story of Queen Esther who risked her life in civil disobedience to save her people. She signed her own death sentence when she approached the king without being summoned by him. The law granted the death penalty for entering the king's presence without invitation; Esther knew the law well and yet she defied it as it was the only way to get the king's attention.

Esther's response to Uncle Mordecai was, "And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!" (Esther 4:16). Thankfully, the story ended well when Esther found favour with the king and he lifted his golden scepter towards her to 'pardon' her for her defiance.

Civil disobedience is a deliberate, courageous and compassionate act of a reformer to expose and condemn the institutionalised evils of his day.

We see this in Jesus' healing of the lame man on a Sabbath and Esther's intrusion into the king's presence. In the earlier account, Jesus exposed the heartlessness of the Jewish laws; in the second, Esther went against the law so as to expose Haman's evil plot to exterminate the Jews.

How do we Malaysian Christians respond to this? Firstly, are there any laws in our system, and even in our churches, that go against the character of our God or the teachings of our Scriptures? If there are (and there are), are we bold enough to imitate our Lord Jesus and Queen Esther?

Our service today lacks power because often, it is marked by timidity. Often too, we cloaked our fear with the turn-the-other-cheek excuse, or by quoting Romans 13:1-5 to free ourselves from the burden of having to engage with the system and society.

We are called to follow our Lord. May He grant us the courage to be like Him.



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