My Daily Pause

“Why are you such a sinner?”

Judas might as well have just come out and said it like that. It is what he meant after all. His greed caused him to react inappropriately to Mary’s lavish gift of oil for Jesus. (John 12:1-8)

Mary Magdalene – 1530 – Jan van Scorel (1495–1552)

John comes right out and says that Judas didn’t care for the poor . In fact, John made it clear a few times that Judas had some problems. This day was nothing new. (John 12:6)

There is a couple of reasons why we don’t go around pointing out the sins and shortcomings of others:

1. There might be something they can say about us.
2. It is probably (or usually) more blatant than the thing we are pointing out.

This sounds a lot like the speck and the log problem in Matthew 7:3-4.

Jesus resolves this event by pointing out a condition that Judas was not taking into account. (John 12:8) In another situation what Mary did might have been less appropriate. For now though, it was the right thing to do.

There is a time and place to help others with their sins, but we typically need to pay more attention to ourselves.

So here’s how we can be better company:

• Mind our own shortcomings (sins)
• Assume uninvited criticism is unwanted