“Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Luke 5:31-32 (NIV)
Luke’s account of the calling of Simon Peter, and James and John to follow Jesus is powerful.
Simon Peter falls at Jesus’ knees and says “Go away from me Lord; I am a sinful man.”
The Lord’s response is to call him into discipleship.
Do you know that you are a sinner?
Do you know that churches are full of people who know they are sinners?
We forget this and think to ourselves that churches are where the ‘good’ people are, and yet the truth that is pressed home by Luke in this chapter
is that people only become ‘good’ after coming to Christ and being made clean thru the
forgiveness of their sins.
forgiveness of their sins.
The Lord did not come to call the ‘good’ people, He came to call the ‘sinners’.
How is it that when ‘sinners’ start to hang around our church we get our backs up?
How is it that when people fall on their knees in front of Christ and give their hearts to the Lord, we want them to instantly behave like a ‘good’ person?
Which seems to mean behave like people who have been following Christ for years, and who have seen change occur over time.
For some reason we expect instant change in them but are ok with gradual change in us.
The apostle Paul knew he had a bunch of ‘sinners’ in the Corinthian church, people who were called by Christ to follow Him, yet people who were in relationships that most of us in Canadian churches would say are unacceptable.
Paul didn’t find it unacceptable, he had the spirit of Christ, he had the mind of Christ – the Christ who came to call sinners to repentance.
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