Daniel, as Nehemiah will do, fully identifies not only with
his people's suffering but also with their sin.
Daniel has been a righteous man in exile, refusing to eat what the king
offered and refusing to bow before the king.
In his wisdom and righteousness he has been a witness to the king and
the religious leaders of Babylon to the power of Yahweh. Nonetheless, Daniel does not say that
"they" deserve exile and "they" are deserving of open
shame, he always uses the first person plural pronoun "we." Remember that God spoke through the prophet
Ezekiel a couple of days ago and said not to blame their exile on the sins of
their fathers. Here, Daniel, one of
those exiles, doesn't accuse anyone of sin without including himself in their
number. Daniel cared more about the
people than he did maintaining some standing of his own. He makes no excuses, no plea for his own
honor or fairness, he accepts full responsibility for this situation. Also note that he does this alone, the people
don't join him in this confession. We as
a church, as the church, need to be in prayer for repentance for our failures,
just as Daniel does here.
Jesus was very clear on His mission. He didn't come to judge the world but to save
it. He spoke the truth to the world, the
words the Father told Him to speak. He offers
life and light and it is up to us to receive them. If we hear but don't obey, so be it at this
time, He wasn't worrying Himself about that issue, judgment would come
later. What would it look like if we
took the same attitude toward unbelievers?
We spend an awful lot of time judging the world for its unbelief and
Jesus did not. We, too, have a mission,
and that is given clearly in the Great Commission, making disciples. We once walked in darkness as well and did
nothing to bring light into our lives, Jesus brought all the light we have and
will bring all the light we will ever have.
Our job, like His, is to make Him known, not worry about the results.
How is Jesus perfected through suffering when He is perfect
anyway? We tend to focus on His divinity
and leave aside His humanity. He was
fully human and fully divine and the human side was indeed perfected through
suffering in that He experienced suffering and persevered in righteousness, He
has passed all the tests we would ever face.
The writer sees the fear of death being critical in the slavery to sin,
our own mortality causes us to be myopic with respect to life and the things of
the world. In his first campaign for the
presidency, Barack Obama referred to some as bitter clingers, clinging to God
and guns. Unfortunately, that caricature
has some basis in reality. Have we been
set free from the fear of death that causes us to cling to the stuff of earth
that Rich Mullins wrote "competes for the allegiance that I owe only to
the giver of all good things"? When
we do, we haven't done what Daniel did, deal with our own part in
fallenness. It is still us against them.
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