November/December 2002
Calling All Sinners
by J. Michael Feazell
| God isn't helped or hampered by who you are or what you've been up to; he forgives anybody, even the worst sinners. |
Jesus once told an allegory about two kinds of people who went to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector (Luke 18:9-14). We might be tempted to nod knowingly and say, "Yes, of course, the Pharisees were the self-righteous hypocrites." Well, maybe, but let's put that assessment aside for the moment and consider what Jesus' listeners would have been thinking.
First, Pharisees were not thought of as hypocritical bad guys, as we 2000-years-down-the-road-Christians tend to think of them. Pharisees were, as a matter of fact, the devoted, careful, faithful religious minority of the Jews who were standing heartily in the breach against the growing tide of liberalism, compromise and syncretism with the Roman world with its pagan Greek culture. They called the people back to the law and committed themselves to faithfulness in obedience.
When the Pharisee in the story prayed, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people," he was not just whistling Dixie. It was true. His respect for the law was impeccable, and he and the Pharisee minority devoted themselves to keeping it in a world where its importance had become seriously eroded. He was not like other men, and he was not even taking the credit for that -- he was thanking God that it was so.
Tax collectors, on the other hand, were notorious crooks -- Jews who worked for the Roman occupation forces collecting tax revenues from their own people, and worse, they were often men of few scruples who routinely inflated the bills for their own profit (compare Matthew 5:46). Those listening to Jesus' story would have instantly pegged the Pharisee as a man of God -- the white hat -- and the tax collector as the archetypal wicked man -- the black hat.
But Jesus, as usual, was making an entirely unexpected point: God isn't helped or hampered by who you are or what you've been up to; he forgives anybody, even the worst sinners, who simply trust him to forgive them. And equally as shocking, people who think they are more righteous than others (even with ample physical evidence of it) are still in their sins, not because God won't forgive them, but because they won't receive what they don't believe they need.
Good News For Sinners
The gospel is for sinners, not for righteous people. Righteous people just don't get into the gospel as it really is, because they have the notion that they don't need that kind of gospel. To righteous people, the gospel is the good news that God is on their side. They know they are behaving in a more godly manner than the overt sinners in the world around them.
To righteous people, the gospel is a trumpet of condemnation toward the sinners of the world, a warning message that sinners should stop sinning and begin living like they, the righteous people, do.
But that is not the gospel. The gospel is good news for sinners. It declares that God has already forgiven their sins and given them a new life in Jesus Christ. It's a message that causes sinners who are sick of sin's cruel tyranny over them to sit up and take notice. It means that God, the God of righteousness, whom they thought was against them (since he has every reason to be), is really for them and in fact loves them. It means that God is not holding their sins against them, but has already in Jesus Christ paid for their sins and broken sin's death grip on them. It means they don't have to live another day in fear, doubt or guilt. It means they can trust God to be everything Jesus Christ says he is -- forgiver, redeemer, savior, advocate, provider, friend.
That's why sinners like Jesus. He's on their side.
What about you? Are you a sinner? Isn't it time to have a talk with Jesus? He's on your side, you know.
-- J. Michael Feazell