To Call Sinners
Well, Jesus spoke a lot about what his coming meant. He explained it quite well on all sorts of occasions in his life, including this one in Matthew 9. He was busy having dinner at Matthew's house. There were tax collectors and other known sinners eating with him and the disciples. The Pharisees got all cheesed off and said to the disciples, “why does your teacher eat with such people?” Jesus heard them. And in verse 12 and 13, he said “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” and then here it is, he says, “for I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
Call to Transformation
He came to call sinners to repentance. He came to to minister to those who didn't know God, to show them what God was all about and bring them into the full life that we spoke of yesterday. That's why he came. He said it. I didn't come to call the healthy, I came to call the sick, the sin-sick.
You see, friends, we're all sinners. We all need the saving love of Jesus. And the Pharisees didn't believe that. They believed that their good deeds were earning them their way. Jesus said “I've not come to call those who think they don't need God, but who think that their own strength and their own willpower and their own holiness is going to earn them their way forward.” He said “No, I've come to call those who know that they're sinners. And to help them be transformed by the grace of God.”
Every Christmas time we think of Jesus in a manger. We marvel at how God brought him into the world. Let's remember that he came to call us to repentance. He came to call those who are sinners into repentance so that they could be set free from their lives of sin and live lives of true love and holiness.
Jesus came, friends, not just to pat us on the back and say well done, although he does do that. But he came that we might repent and turn from our sins and live holy lives. He loved sitting with people who were known sinners because they were the people who needed the transforming grace of God most. And so he cared for them and loved them and showed them that God valued them and challenged them, no doubt, to change their ways.
Grace and Redemption
I mean, remember the adulterous woman to whom he showed extraordinary love and compassion, but told her, “go and sin no more”. This is the Jesus way, reaching out, loving, caring even to the worst sinners, but pointing them to the lives of holiness that God calls them to.
Will you remember today that it's not your self-righteousness that means anything to God? And once you've repented and turned from your sins, friends, will you stay with Jesus, live the holy life he's called you to? He came not to call the righteous but sinners, but he called them, as he always did in the gospels, to a new life transformed by God's grace.
Praise God this Christmas that every sinner can find redemption in this little baby boy who was born and went on to become the Saviour.
