Luke 9:55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
The last part of Luke 9 is about prejudice, what it is, what it costs, and what the Lord thinks about it. The Bible says, “When the time was come when he [Jesus] should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.” So, Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem. The Bible says that as He sent messengers ahead to a village of Samaritans, “they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.” These Samaritans would not receive Jesus into their village because He was Jewish. They wouldn’t receive Him because of prejudice.
Usually when we think of prejudice, we are thinking about racial prejudice. Indeed that is the case here, but prejudice is prejudicial. It is something that I have prejudged, something I have judged before I know. Here the Samaritans did not receive the Lord Jesus because they did not receive Jewish people.
Now the Jewish people were the same towards the Samaritans. On one occasion, Jewish people, Jesus’ own countrymen, said to Him, “Don’t we accurately say that you have a devil and that you are a Samaritan?” Again, John 1 tells us that Jesus came into the world and “the world knew him not.” The world He made did not receive Him. John continues, “He came unto His own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”
Even Jesus’ own disciples, when this instance occurred, essentially said, “You must call down fire from heaven as Elijah did on those Samaritans centuries ago.” Jesus’ response is telling. He rebuked the disciples and said, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” Do you know what manner of spirit you are of? Are you the spirit of geography, a country? Is yours the spirit informed by a particular age? Or, do you know God’s mind on the world?
The bottom line is that prejudice is a judgment you reach before knowing and accepting God’s purpose. Jesus had told the disciples His purpose. He was to be crucified and to take upon Him the sins of the whole world, but they did not like that idea. Verse 45 says “They understood not.” And in verse 56 Jesus says, “For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”
The truth is that if my thinking today is informed by nothing more than the time in which I live and the country in which I live, I will be short-sighted. I will judge things inaccurately because I will not know God’s perspective on those things. Prejudice is a judgment I reach before I know God’s purpose. God’s purpose in sending His Son was to save sinners, sinners just like you and sinners who are nothing like you. So, the way to have the proper perspective on the world is to know Who Jesus is and why God sent Him.