1 Timothy 1:15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.
Matthew 9:13 “But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Mark 2:17 And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
If it is part of our theological statement or creed, we will say that we believe that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. But it is to be wondered just how far that statement has sunk into our hearts. It is far more important to us in the modern day that people be respectable and have the right morality. It is far more important for us to have those who have the same creed we do and believe it to the letter than it is to deal with each other as sinners or to understand that sinners need Christ. It is far easier to just accept the fact that all men are sinners, though maybe not all that bad, than it is to really accept the fact that I am a really bad sinner, my children are really bad sinners, and that all my relatives are really bad sinners.
As long as people will go along with certain statements in Romans 9 and Ephesians 1-2, we will account them orthodox and accepted into our fellowship. But Jesus Christ came to save sinners and not those who can articulate a sound belief about Romans 9 and Ephesians 1-2. It is the spiritually dead that He will raise to spiritual life rather than those who are know a lot about Romans 9 and Ephesians 1-2. It is one thing to know that God makes people alive in Christ, but it is quite another to be raised to life by God. It is one thing to know about the facts that people are dead in their sins and trespasses, but it is quite another to come to a soul-wrenching knowledge that I am dead in sins and trespasses. It is even more to understand that each member of my family is dead in sins and trespasses and there is nothing I can do to raise them from that spiritual death. God alone can do that and He only does so by grace alone.
In the I Timothy passage about it tells us that the statement “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” deserves “full acceptance.” This seems to intimate at the very least that there are levels of how we accept that statement. We can hear it with the ears or we can understand in the depths of our souls that Jesus Christ did not come to save/call the righteous, but sinners. This teaches us at the very least that we must not have confidence in our own salvation or anyone else’s regarding their external righteousness. This teaches us not to trust in anything but Christ alone and His grace alone. This teaches us God alone can save sinners and He must do it by grace rather than by our theological and biblical understandings.
Rather than churches being the place where the nice people, the moral people, and the well-dressed people meet; they are to be places where the worst of sinners (in their own eyes) gather. It is hard to be among those who are full of themselves and their own self-righteousness as they walk around smiling and seeming to be without a hard thing in life when you are wrestling with the horror and misery of your own wicked heart. Attending “church” where people are positive and glib about how God works things for the positive in all instances and hearing the testimonies of how God has blessed people with this and that by the happy people can make one who is sick at heart over his or her bondage to sin rather nauseated.
There are people “in the pews” who are sick of their sin but they never receive the message of the true Healer of sin. They don’t know that there is anyone else in the world that wrestles with sin and a hard heart. They hear positive messages about how nice God is to the moral or perhaps some exposition of a verse or a passage that feeds the intellect but leaves the soul on ice. Oh, the poor sinners cries, where is God? Oh how poor and broken sinners long to have a few crumbs from the Bread of Life and yet all they hear is teaching to inform the brain. How these foremost of sinners in their own feelings and hearts long to hear of a Savior who can deal with their own misery, but they get nothing but intellectual information. Christ did not come to save us from our ignorance as such, but He came to save sinners from their sin. How sinners need to hear more of Christ saving sinners rather than theological dry bread, though theology is deeper when it is focused on Christ and His saving sinners.
God Loves... Himself 
Leave a comment