ルカによる福音書11:45-54 Luke 11:45-54,
「こうして、天地創造の時から流されたすべての預言者の血について、今の時代の者たちが責任を問われることになる。それは、アベルの血から、祭壇と聖所の間で殺されたゼカルヤの血にまで及ぶ。」 （ルカ11:50-51）
「アベルの血」とは、アダムとエバの子アベルが兄のカインによって殺された創世記4章に記されている殺人事件のことです。それでは、「ゼカルヤの血」とは何のことでしょうか？これは、ソロモン王の死んだ後に、イスラエル王国が南北に分裂してできた二つの国のうち、南のユダ王国で起こった事件のことです。
紀元前の9世紀、ユダ王国の王ヨアシュ（前840-801年在位）の時代にゼカルヤという預言者がいました。この人が殺されたことは、旧約聖書の歴代誌下の24章に記されています。ヨアシュは7歳の子どもの時に王の位に着きました。彼が王位に着く前に、ユダ王国はアタルヤというヨアシュの祖母にあたる女性によって支配されていました。アタルヤは残忍な人で、将来自分の権力を妨げる恐れのある孫のヨアシュを殺そうとしました。しかし、信心深い祭司ヨヤダとその妻ヨシェバが幼いヨアシュをかくまい、ヨアシュの命を守りました。その後、祭司ヨヤダは暴力的に国を支配していたアタルヤを追い払い、ヨアシュを王の位につけてヨアシュの後見人として彼を支えたのち、高齢になって死にました。
ところが、祭司ヨヤダの死後、ヨアシュ王は時代の風潮に染まって神様に対する正しい信仰を失い、偶像礼拝をするようになりました。そこで、祭司ヨヤダの子であるゼカルヤは、神様の御言葉を取り継いで「なぜあなたたちは主の戒めを破るのか。あなたたちは栄えない。あなたたちが主を捨てたから、主もあなたたちを捨てる」（歴代下24:20）と警告をしました。ところが、ヨアシュ王は、命の恩人の祭司ヨヤダの子であるゼカルヤの警告を聞いて悔い改めるどころか、ゼカルヤを神殿の庭で石打ちの刑で殺してしまいました。残酷な石打ちの刑にされたゼカルヤは「主がこれを御覧になり、責任を追及してくださいますように」（歴代下24:22）と語って死にました。そのことを受けて、キリストは51節の終わりのところで「そうだ。言っておくが、今の時代の者たちはその責任を問われる」と語っておられるのです。 （8月10日の説教より）
Human life should be formed from within. However, many people try to improve their outward appearance first. Of course, it is not entirely meaningless to “start with the form.” For example, so-called manners and etiquette have a certain important meaning in shaping relationships between people. However, no matter how well one observes etiquette, if there is malice in one’s heart, it becomes what is called “hypocritical politeness” in Japanese. Therefore, while there may be aspects of our lives that begin with outward forms, these should only be peripheral, and the centre must be the purification and ordering of the heart, so that a righteous life is properly formed.
There was a time in the United States when there was a law called Prohibition which prohibited the production, sale and transportation of alcoholic liquor. This time was from 1919 to 1933. During that time, were people living sincere and devout lives? It seems that was not the case. Illegal production of moonshine, i.e., illicitly brewed liquor was rampant, and gangs seeking to profit from it grew in power. After the end of World War I in 1918, an atmosphere of hedonistic living spread, and the economy overheated. Eventually, the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression. In such an era, a law like Prohibition, which imposed abstinence from alcohol from the outside, could not properly shape people’s lives. However, even today, there are regions in the United States where the sale of alcohol is prohibited or restricted. And in Islam, the Quran prohibits the consumption of alcohol and pork.
From ancient times to the present, humans have regulated their behaviour through rules. Such a rule-centred way of life is well exemplified by the approach of Jewish legal scholars during the New Testament era. In Jewish society during the New Testament era, there were people called scribes who were experts in the law. Most of the scribes belonged to a sect of Judaism called the Pharisees. They interpreted in detail which actions were in accordance with God’s law and which were not, and taught these to the people.
Jesus Christ frequently engaged in debates with the scribes. For example, there was a debate that arose when Jesus’ disciples plucked heads of grain in a field, rubbed them and eat them in their hands on the Sabbath, a day when labour was prohibited. The scribes of Pharisees interpreted the disciples’ actions as corresponding to the labour of harvesting and threshing, which was prohibited by the law on the Sabbath, and criticised Jesus and his disciples. In response, Jesus cited the example of King David in the Old Testament, who, while fleeing persecution, ate the bread of the sanctuary, which was reserved for priests serving God according to the law. He then declared, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
Additionally, there was an instance where Christ performed a miracle of healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. According to the teachings of the scribes of Pharisees, healing the sick on the Sabbath was only permitted in cases where immediate treatment was necessary to prevent death. Based on this teaching, healing a man with a withered hand should have been done after the Sabbath had ended and it was a regular day. However, Jesus asked the people, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4). And He performed the miracle of healing the man with the withered hand.
In this way, Jesus Christ taught that the law was meant to teach people to love God and their neighbours, and that this could be achieved by believing in Christ himself and following him. Therefore, Christ and the scribes of Pharisees were in direct opposition to one another. The Apostle Paul declared in Galatians 2:16, “A person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law.” Furthermore, in Romans 3:20, he stated, “No human being can be justified in the sight of God by keeping the law” (REB), and in verses 21- 22, he asserted, “The righteousness of God has been made known; it is effective through faith in Christ for all who have such faith—all, without distinction” (REB). Martin Luther, a leader of the Protestant Reformation, championed the theme of “justification by faith alone” and engaged in a debate with the Catholic Church, which held that salvation is achieved through good works. Furthermore, the Heidelberg Catechism, which records the teachings of the Reformed church, answers the 60th question on justification by faith as follows:
Question 60: How are you righteous before God?
Answer: Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments, of never having kept any of them, and of still being inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without any merit of my own, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, and as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is accept this gift with a believing heart.
Thus, the idea that we are saved not by keeping the law but by believing in Christ is a central theme of Christian teachings.
In today’s passage, Christ accuses the evil deeds of the lawyers, i.e., scribes in three points. First, they impose heavy burdens on people. Second, they persecute and kill the prophets sent by God. Third, they deprive people of the knowledge that leads to salvation.
Regarding the first accusation, Chrisy says in verse 46, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.” In other words, the scribes created many difficult rules that were hard for people to follow and forced them to obey these rules. In Matthew 23:3, Christ accuses the scribes as people who “preach, but do not practice.” That is, the scribes were teaching things that they themselves could not do. “You yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers” means that while they imposed the burden of keeping the law on others, they themselves escaped from that burden. However, some scholars interpret this passage to mean that the scribes did not help ordinary people to keep the law. While this interpretation is not entirely impossible, it is more appropriate to interpret it as meaning that the scribes knew the loopholes in the law and cleverly used them to escape the burden of the law themselves.
The second accusation is detailed in verses 47-51. The main meaning of this accusation is that you are the same as those who killed the prophets of the Old Testament. The scribes, as mentioned in verse 47, had built tombs for the prophets of the Old Testament and pretended to be devout people who feared and revered God. However, they did not humbly listen to the words of demanding repentance spoken by the prophets. This is because, although the prophets had called for the practice of love, justice, and humility, the scribes had not practised love, justice, or humility. Christ sarcastically revealed the hypocrisy of the scribes in verse 48: “So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their tombs.” Furthermore, the words quoted in verse 49, “I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,” are not found in the Old Testament or Jewish literature. These words were probably given directly to Christ by God regarding the history of Israel and his own time.
In the history of Israel in the Old Testament, there were many instances where prophets who carried God’s word were persecuted. And such attitudes of persecution were carried over to the Jews who crucified and killed Christ. Therefore, in verses 50-51, Christ says, “The blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.” “The blood of Abel” refers to the murder of Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, by his brother Cain, as recorded in Genesis chapter 4. Then, what does “the blood of Zechariah” refer to? This refers to an event that occurred in the southern kingdom of Judah, one of the two kingdoms that emerged after the division of the Kingdom of Israel following the death of King Solomon. In the 9th century BCE, during the reign of King Joash (840–801 BC) of the Kingdom of Judah, there was a prophet named Zechariah. His murder is recorded in 2 Chronicles chapter 24. Joash ascended the throne at the age of seven. Before he became king, the Kingdom of Judah was ruled by his grandmother, Athaliah. Athaliah was a cruel woman who sought to kill her grandson Joash, fearing he might threaten her power in the future. However, the devout priest Jehoiada and his wife Jehoshabeath hid the young Joash and protected his life. Later, the priest Jehoiada overthrew Athaliah, who had been ruling the country violently, placed Joash on the throne, and supported him as his guardian until his death in old age.
However, after the death of the priest Jehoiada, King Joash was swayed by the trends of the times, lost his true faith in God, and began to worship idols. Then Zechariah, the son of the priest Jehoiada, carried the word of God and warned, “Why do you break the commandments of the LORD, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have forsaken the LORD, he has forsaken you” (2 Chronicles 24:20). However, King Joash not only refused to repent upon hearing the warning from Zechariah, the son of the priest Jehoiada, but also had Zechariah stoned to death in the courtyard of the temple. Zechariah, who was cruelly stoned to death, said, “May the LORD see and avenge!” (2 Chronicles 24:22), and then he died. In response to this, Christ says at the end of verse 51 of today’s passage, “Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation.”
The third accusation, as stated in verse 52, is that the scribes, who had the duty to convey the knowledge of salvation to the people, did not do so. In other words, they did not tell people that believing in Christ and following him is the way to salvation, but instead taught the false idea that salvation comes from keeping the commandments of the law as they interpreted them. This can be called the greatest evil of legalism. Teaching that one can be counted as righteous before God by keeping the law is a mistake that shakes the very foundation of Christian teaching. The Apostle Paul also forcefully argued this point in Galatians 3:7–11 as follows, based on the fact that Abraham in the Old Testament was justified by faith.
Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
There were people in the Galatian church who taught that one must undergo the ritual of circumcision prescribed in the Old Testament to be fully saved, so Paul issued this stern warning. The lives of those who seek salvation through keeping the law may appear solid on the surface, but they are surprisingly fragile when faced with difficulties. This is because their lives are not firmly grounded in the heart but rely solely on outward actions. Therefore, let us pray that our lives will be shaped from within by the Holy Spirit. Of course, it is impossible to understand what Christian life should be like without concrete examples. Therefore, weekly bulletin of our church also includes specific guidelines for Christian life in the form of “Church Life Guidelines.” However, these guidelines are not intended to be a set of rules to be followed outwardly or to force people into a single mould. Rather, it is our desire that members of our church will be purified and guided by the Holy Spirit, shaped from within as Christians, and as a result, live the kind of life described in the “Church Life Guidelines.” Through the grace of Christ, may each of us be shaped from within, so that we may worship, evangelise, serve, give offerings, and enjoy fellowship in a way that is right.
And as I have been explaining, it is the work of the Holy Spirit that shapes our character from within. The great difference between a true Christian and a legalistic person is whether they believe in the works of God the Holy Spirit, who conveys the grace of Christ in the formation of character and life, and whether they entrust themselves to the work of the Holy Spirit. That is, whether we are living with the goal of achieving the state described by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 2:20: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Let us live our lives in prayer, striving to become true Christians whose hearts are filled with the Holy Spirit and the grace of Christ, overflowing in our actions, rather than false Christians whose hearts are empty and whose outward appearance is merely a façade.