<p>11:46 <i>And he said: Woe to you lawyers also For you load people with burdens- </i>John appears to allude to this in saying that the true commandments are &ldquo;not grievous&rdquo; (1 Jn. 5:3, s.w. &ldquo;heavy&rdquo;). The fences created by men around God&rsquo;s law are in fact higher than the actual Divine law. God&rsquo;s laws have a creative intention, whereas human fences around them are totally negative in their intention. The Lord uses the same word later in the discourse, in stating that the &lsquo;heavier&rsquo; matters of the law are justice, mercy and faith. Yet even those things are not &ldquo;heavy&rdquo; (1 Jn. 5:3) in the sense that the regulations of the Pharisees were. The Lord&rsquo;s burden is light compared with the weight of carrying unforgiven sin (Mt. 11:30). The parallel between sin and heavy burdens is also found in David&rsquo;s comment about carrying the weight of his unforgiven sin with Bathsheba (Ps. 38:4). The burden of sin was thus tied upon people by giving them religious rules which they were unable to keep due to human weakness, and because sin is partly a matter of conscience, it was still counted to the people as sin if they broke it. Therefore to enforce such rules upon people was effectively lading them with sin. This principle needs to be considered by those who &lsquo;bind&rsquo; isolation from other brethren upon believers, or who &lsquo;bind&rsquo; them to a single life after divorce.</p><p><i>Hard to bear- </i>The Lord sensitively commented that He had many things to command His disciples, &ldquo;but you cannot bear / carry s.w. them at this time&rdquo; (Jn. 16:12). In teaching others God&rsquo;s requirements, we must be sensitive to human weakness, rather than present them with a whole set of Divine standards as a package and demand their immediate acceptance of it. The Lord still accepted the disciples, even though He had not asked them to do all the things He would like to have asked them to do. And there are likewise levels of discipleship for us too. The same word is also used about carrying the cross of Jesus (Lk. 14:27; Jn. 19:17). This is the ultimately hard to be carried burden. If people have signed up to carry this, who are we to seek to add to it by our demands upon them. James surely had the Lord&rsquo;s teaching here in mind when he reasoned that neither the disciples nor the Jewish fathers had been able to carry the yoke of the Mosaic law (Acts 15:10). Any teaching that the Mosaic law must be obeyed and there are plenty of Christians teaching this, sadly is therefore seeking to bind a heavy burden upon men which will lead to their spiritual collapse and thereby to our own condemnation.</p><p><i>And you yourselves do not touch the burdens- </i>Mt. 23:4 they will not move or 'remove' them. The Lord by contrast used touch frequently in order to connect with sinful people and their conditions, and to thereby heal them. The Pharisees would not touch them for fear of contamination; they would not associate or engage with sinful people and the results of their sins. The Lord used His fingers to enter the ears of the deaf and touch the eyes of the blind, secreting unclean body fluid. This is the way to remove burdens- to engage with them. And yet closed table policies effectively do the same, by refusing association with those judged by latter day Pharisees to be too serious sinners. The fear of guilt by association is utterly selfish, and results in the burdens never being removed or made lighter for the person struggling to carry them.</p><p><i>With one of your fingers</i>- The contrast is between the weight of the burdens on the shoulders of men, so great it crushed them; and the ease with which the law-makers could remove them with their fingers, perhaps referring to their ability to write things with a few strokes of the fingers which would remove those burdens. This is ever more true today- a few taps with a finger on a keyboard to change traditional demands on fellow believers, and burdens can be removed.</p>