The Message
Credentials are fascinating things. If you've traveled overseas, you know the feeling of using a US Passport returning through customs -- the passport is what gets you home, what validates your identity, what allows you in. To walk up to that desk without it, you'd feel exposed, fearing rejection.
There are other credentials. Credentials like degrees that you earn in college. Credentials you pick up in your career or in other places, that say you belong in whatever organization you're in.
The Pharisees were desperate to expose Jesus as a man without credentials. They felt like their practices, their purity, gave them all the credentials they had, and Jesus' refusal to pick up those same practices, however empty they were to the Pharisees, infuriated them.
As Christians, we know that we are sinful, and we look to Jesus as the only credential we need. To try and earn our own credentials would be folly -- we can never be perfect enough to credential our own way into heaven.
How do you know you belong? In Christ, through faith, we have access to the heavenly throne. We are washed clean, forgiven, and given the greatest gift of hope, a credential we could never earn and can only receive.
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