There once was a group who looked like the most blessed of men. God’s favor seemed to rest upon them. They were respected. They were religious. Some of them were rich. Had Bible décor been around in their day, the wall art in their homes may well have framed how they felt and appeared: “Blessed.”
One man, however, looked at this group and saw something different:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! (Matthew 23:13)
Woe. The very tone of the word betrays its meaning. It speaks of sorrow and loss, destruction and undoing, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus began his public ministry in Matthew pronouncing blessings upon his followers (Matthew 5:3–12). Now, near the end, Jesus’s eight Beatitudes find their photonegative in his seven searing Woes (Matthew 23:13–36).
If the Beatitudes sketch a picture of the blessed life, then the Woes do the same for the unblessed life. Woe after woe, Jesus pushes past the surface of worldly comfort and religious respectability to show us the most unblessed of men. As he does so, he pushes past the surface of our own souls as well, asking if our vision of blessedness looks more like the kingdom of heaven or more like this Christless world.
To help us examine ourselves, let’s consider the matter inversely, looking through the lens of Jesus’s woes. If someone wanted to live the unblessed life, what would he do?
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