Many of us are familiar with the wisdom passed to Peter Parker—a.k.a. Spider-Man—from his Uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility.” These are important words for Peter as he tries to bring his newfound superpower to bear in his life. But where did Uncle Ben get such wisdom? I don’t know if Uncle Ben and Aunt May regularly went to church, but here is what Jesus says in Luke 12:48:
“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
As Christ-followers, we have been given much! We have been given love, acceptance, reconciliation, hope, forgiveness, and more. It is our responsibility to give out what we have received. This Sunday, in our series Soul Search, we will be talking about our relationships with others. These relationships should be saturated with these gifts. None of these things are supposed to stop with us. We are to be conduits of the gifts of God.
Look at Matthew 6:14-15. Jesus says:
“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
We see something similar in the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt. 18:21-35). After the unmerciful servant is forgiven a huge debt and then demands repayment of a small debt, he is dragged before his master, who says, “You wicked servant. I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed.
With great power comes great responsibility. We are the Lord’s ambassadors on the earth. We carry the name and authority of Jesus everywhere we go. This does not put us in positions of pride and arrogance, but recognizing that we have a responsibility to serve others as we have been served, to love others as we have been loved, and to forgive others as we have been forgiven.