Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 17-18.

Today is another day where I am not sure that I can tie everything I want to write about together.  First I want to write about what I believe is Jesus’ hardest teaching.  It starts out relatively easy: if someone close to us, a “brother or sister”, perhaps a fellow Believer, sins against us, we should confront them, and, if they repent, forgive them.  But it gets really hard, really fast: if they sin against us again, but come back and say that they repent, we must forgive them again, even if they do it seven times in a day (and I don’t think Jesus was saying that we can stop forgiving if they do it an eighth time).  The first time is easy because it seems to say that the first time they have to actually repent for us to be required to forgive them, but it is clear that after that all they have to do is say that their sorry and we are supposed to forgive them.  Ultimately, I believe that Jesus teaches us that we should forgive everyone who offends against us, not for their sake, but for our own.  There exists a saying that goes, “Not forgiving others is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.”

Next I want to look at what Jesus has to say about His return and the coming of the Kingdom of God.  Actually, I should put that in the reverse order, for He discussed the coming of the Kingdom of God before He spoke of His return.  When asked to predict when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus answered that no one can predict that because the Kingdom of God is within us (or, perhaps He was saying that no one can know when it will come for someone else).  After this when He was speaking to just His disciples, He told them that when the Messiah returned, everyone would know it; His return will be like a bolt of lightning which crosses the entire sky, except this “lightning bolt” will go across the sky all around the globe.  Further, Jesus tells us that upon His return, some will be suddenly taken, while others right next to them will remain.  From this account it is not clear if it is a good thing to be taken, or to remain, but since Jesus’ message was that we should be prepared because there would be no time to prepare when that day arrives, it does not matter.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.