Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?
Our imperfections can impede and hamper us in our attempts to offer guidance or healing to others. But we cannot allow them to become excuses.
If I preach the Gospel, this is no reason for me to boast,
for an obligation has been imposed on me,
and woe to me if I do not preach it!
Once we know the Gospel we become obliged to share it. Once we receive mercy we cannot withhold mercy from others. But we must begin by letting ourselves be trained by our Teacher.
No disciple is superior to the teacher;
but when fully trained,
every disciple will be like his teacher.
We can't afford to wait until we are fully trained to proclaim the Gospel. But we do need training first. We at least need the healing of the wooden beam in our own eye in order to be able to help with splinters in the eyes of our brothers and sisters. We need to live the live of disciples, receiving training and healing from our teacher, in order to be useful to others, to be able to bless them with what will truly help them.
Even Paul did not feel he had fully arrived. He still recognized the need for discipline, to run with purpose, and to fight.
No, I drive my body and train it,
for fear that, after having preached to others,
I myself should be disqualified.
We should strive for perfection without which no one will see God (see Hebrews 12:14 and Matthew 5:48). But we must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. We have been given inestimable wealth in the good news of Jesus. The first step, and the starting place to which we must constantly return, is to let the good news transform us. We must remember that our minds have been renewed and remember to use them accordingly. But from there we must allow ourselves to become men and women who are defined as being people for others.
I have become all things to all, to save at least some.
All this I do for the sake of the Gospel,
so that I too may have a share in it.
Rather than simply sitting in the darkness of the blindness of our old natures, rather than merely lamenting the wounds of the boards in our eyes, let us return to Jesus. He himself is the light of the world. He will heal us. We are not called to become surgeons. We are called instead to lead others to this same source of light and healing. While we can't be blind and do this, neither does it require twenty-twenty vision.
Run so as to win.
We tend to think that we ourselves must conduct the surgery to heal others. We therefore wait for a level of perfection and knowledge in ourselves that we never attain. While we lose ourselves in self-absorption the world loses itself in woundedness and sin. Jesus longs to meet the needs of the world through us. May we open our hearts.
For a sun and a shield is the LORD God;
grace and glory he bestows;
The LORD withholds no good thing
from those who walk in sincerity.
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