“Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the “sinners” and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Did you know that Jesus is not religious?
He actually prefers to hang with non-religious cats more than anyone!
Okay we all know this. Chances are, if you’re church folk, you’ve probably sang the chorus: “Jesus Jesus, Friend of sinners!” But read the verse here and let it really sink in. Its interesting to note that the first people Jesus in His wisdom chose to be associated with were sinners. And not ‘just’ sinners, because that would include everyone, but ‘sinners’ in contrast to those whom thought of themselves as being righteous. The people who were seen as ‘un clean’ by the religious aristocracy of the day, were the first people God would allow to know Him; they were the first ‘marginalized’ people group God incarnate would acquaint Himself with.
It reminds me of Hagar. Talk about marginalized. She was a woman, a ‘slave’ woman actually, an Egyptian slave women, with no rights, and no natural business partaking of the promises of God, yet, in her moment of need, being cast out Abraham’s family by the ‘chosen’ Sarah, she encounters God. Not only does she encounter God, but she gets the audacious privilege of ‘naming God’ with one of His first ‘revelational’ names ever mentioned in the bible. She names Him: Yehovah La Hay Roi. Literally, the God who sees me.
God is in the business of hanging out with those who are outcast. God actually defies the theological myth that sin is like some sort of Kryptonite, that God simply cannot be in an inch of. Granted, God cannot partake in, or instigate sin. Nor does he ‘wink’ at sin or deal with it in anyway less than Just. But, ever since the recorded history of mankind, God has been getting His Holy hands dirty, by carefully and wildly handling the lives of imperfect people who desire to know the true God.
I am glad that God in His holiness is still pleased to be involved in my life, and even dwell inside of me, a sinful man.
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Tags: forgiveness, Jesus friend of sinners, mark 2:13-17, marks gospel, religion, salvation, sin
