Articles
Take It All!
Take It All!
Greg King
When the Doctor prescribes medicine he often ends his examination with “make sure you take it all.” Just taking and following part of the doctor’s orders will inevitably leave one with a continued illness and not a cure. When we aren’t willing to listen and heed all of the instructions we remain ill. When we don’t listen and heed the instructions we have wasted our time and his, not to mention our money.
Jesus had something to say to the scribes and Pharisees about obeying part of the law and ignoring the rest. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone” (Matthew 23:23). While supposedly being educated in the things of the law they were not sound in their judgment. Doing only part of what God said is the same as not doing any of it. God is not pleased with partial obedience. When we pick and choose the parts of God’s law that we will obey and forget about the others we remain ill. In order to be healed of the dreaded disease of sin, we must take it all! Some like to focus on the laws they like and are keeping and not the ones they do not like and are breaking. We cannot merely focus on the laws we want to keep because Jesus calls this hypocritical living.
