Luke 23:27-31

A great crowd of the people followed Jesus, including women who were beating their breasts and wailing for Him.

I sit with this and try to picture it.

Imagine this scene, the sounds, the sights….

And then, even in His time of extreme agony and fatigue, Jesus still sees the larger picture and can care for others. He tells the women to mourn for themselves because of the awful things coming upon Jerusalem.

It is only the most mature person who can see past their own agony and still care for others in the midst of it. Only a person closely connected to that which is beyond him or herself.

Proverbs 8:13

The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.

“Do I really hate evil?” I ask myself.

Hatred of evil, which we see here is the fear of the LORD, is the starting point of wisdom.

Wisdom hates pride and arrogance. I like how one preacher points out here that pride, self-importance, and sneakiness are the very sins to which gifted people are prone.

Matthew Henry, in his beautiful devotional commentary, says, concerning this verse, that true religion teaches us “to hate all sin, as displeasing to God and destructive to the soul…Wherever there is an awe of God there is a dread of sin, as an evil, as only evil.”

Do we really hate sin? Evil? If not, it seems that we are not even at the beginning point of wisdom. We all hate the sins of pride and arrogance in others, but do we hate them in ourselves? Without hating ourselves?

How clearly He marked His hatred in the days of His flesh by the full exhibition of the opposite grace! “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” [Mt.20:28;Lk.22:27]. A proud disciple of a lowly Savior! How offensive is this contradiction to our Master! What a cause of stumbling to the world!

-Charles Bridges