Jehu is anointed as king of Israel and given a very specific
charge, to bring an ignominious end to the house of Ahab. Elisha sends a servant to do the work of
anointing into the midst of a meeting of the council of the commanders of the
army to do this work. Jehu initially
demurs when asked what the servant had said to him in private but then admits
that he had just been anointed king over Israel. When they heard it, the commanders rose up
and proclaimed it from the steps that Jehu is king. Why did they refer to the man who had come,
one of the sons of the prophets, as a “mad” man? What was the attitude towards prophets in
those days that led them to speak thus of him?
They accepted his word, that Jehu was king of Israel and acted as if it
were true, going out to conspire against Joram towards the end to which Jehu
was commissioned.
Jesus presumes something here doesn’t He? He presumes we
will “practice righteousness.” He
assumes we will give to the needy, that we will pray and that we will
fast. What He doesn’t want us to do is
practice our righteousness for the wrong reasons. Righteousness isn’t about getting other
people to applaud you and believe you are righteous, it is about doing the
right things for the right reasons.
Keeping a commandment, a mitzvah, isn’t something to be applauded for is
it? If I simply do the things I am
supposed to do I shouldn’t get an extra reward for it, just check off the box
that says, “meets expectations.”
Practicing righteousness is something we do to please the God who loves
us, not to win acclaim on earth as a righteous person. We either work from approval or for approval,
the choice is up to us, and how we work shows which way we look at things.
Is Paul arguing that all things are lawful or is he quoting
some saying that was current in Corinth which argued against law at all? Clearly, given the injunctions of the
Jerusalem Council which determined the boundaries given for Gentile converts
vis a vis the law, he is not arguing literally that all things are lawful. Sexual ethics were one of the two things on
the list that must be taught to Gentiles, along with certain restrictions
concerning food sacrificed to idols and meat with the blood in it. Paul likens our bodies to the temple of God. The temple of the Holy Spirit should be
treated as a sacred thing and therefore we are to keep it as such by what we do
with our bodies. We are to glorify God
in our bodies by the practice of righteousness.
The practice of unrighteousness does the opposite. There is such a thing as judgment and we saw
in that first lesson that God will execute His justice on those like Joram who
dishonor Him.
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