Luke 11:52
Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”
Truth: Religious systems can, and often do, restrict people from the knowledge of the truth, rather than enable it.
In chapter eleven of Luke's gospel we Jesus invited for dinner at the home of a Pharisee. Along with this Pharisee there were Scribes and Lawyers (those who recorded the truth spoken by the Pharisees and who interpreted the truth they spoke). This was a great gathering of influential men. These men had opened up their home to Jesus and now was His chance to entice them and invite them to follow Him. What marketing methods would the modern church recommend that Jesus follow in this situation? What argumentation and debate techniques would the modern Christian communication director tell Jesus to use? We may not agree on what He would be told by today's pastors and priest, but we can agree that what He did do would not be repeated in most settings today. Jesus actually insulted them all. He called the hypocrites. He told them they were full of sin on the inside and pretended to look good on the outside. Note what one of the Lawyers says to Him just before Jesus states the above statement:
Luke 11:45
One of the lawyers answered him, “Teacher, in saying these things you insult us also.”
The Lawyer is saying, "by insulting the Pharisees you insult us also." Can you hear his "lawyering" coming through. The Lawyer must be thinking, "defamation lawsuit." This is where Jesus unfolds even more defaming statements. He tells the Lawyer(s) that their interpretation is not just hindering their own path to God, their system is restricting others from understanding and having the "key of knowledge" to come to God. Although religious systems and doctrines ought to be like navigation points we place in our GPS to keep us on track and course, the doctrines and the systems of this group was actually hindering those who followed them from hearing the true knowledge of Jesus Christ, the, soon, risen King. Later Jesus will state, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me." That is a dogmatic doctrine. The religious system of the Lawyers, Pharisees and Scribes was not pointing the people to the Messiah King, Jesus. It was pointing them to a works based doctrine to please men and to meet the requirements found and taught in the system. Systems of belief are important anchors to keep us from following foolish men. But, systems of belief can prevent us from see God in the affairs of men and His plan to save us through His Son, Jesus Christ, the only true Lord. Jesus entered the house of the Pharisee and told him and his guests the truth: That their system was actually preventing people to find the knowledge of Christ. That ought to be the true measurement of any system of belief. If it doesn't point to Christ as the only way to salvation, the system is flawed. John would say as much in his epistle, years after Christ had this exchange with the religious demagogues of the day:
1 John 4:1-3
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
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