In the garden that fateful night of His painful betrayal, Jesus receives the “kiss of death” from his once brotherly friend Judas Iscariot. Immediately after, the disciples want to defend Jesus violently. Obviously, they have not applied the love your enemy truth yet since the indwelling Holy Spirit had not arrived to help them obey. “Lord (master of our lives), shall we strike with the sword?” Jesus responds quickly and verbally first before the supernatural healing after Peter tried to cut off the head of a fellow human being,  slave Malchus, capturing ‘only’ his ear. “Stop! No more of this,” replies God Himself. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword, declares the truth of Jesus. He didn’t say, “Good job so far, Peter. But let’s take off his head too!” Do you hear that, Christian? Stop. No more of this…we are never more like Satan himself [...]

If we’re “saints” and not sinners (which is the truth), then why would we ever find it too hard to see His commandments (rules) as burdensome? The Holy Word boldly declares this eternal fact. It’s the normal life of a ‘little Chirst,’ a Christ-ian. Jesus led the apostle Paul in 1 Cor 10 to write God always provides a way of escape to every temptation. Every single one, so that we’re without excuse. What a sobering alert to our daily life. So, Jesus in Luke 17.10 is teaching on our rightful duty as a slave in God’s kingdom. He says matter-of-factly, “…when you do all the things which are commanded, you say, “We are unworthy slaves, we have done only that which we ought to have done.’”