Traveling around the UK recently, I’ve noted certain self-proclaimed Christian spokespeople standing in town centers preaching the gospel. While I salute their willingness to stand up in public as followers of Christ, my heart sinks as I hear many of them shout at passersby that they are sinners destined to end up in hell.
To me, that seems a far cry from how Christ Jesus went about touching the lives of those struggling with thoughts or actions less than the best, whether in relationship choices, business practices, or being prone to negative traits like self-indulgence and even corruption. The term sin no longer enjoys popular usage, and is at times dismissed as irrelevant, but it is a helpful term. It indicates anything that would separate us from God, and that’s how Jesus responded to it. He interacted with corrupt tax collectors and sinners wherever he discerned a heart inwardly turning toward good, despite protests from religious leaders who tended to focus on maintaining an outward appearance of good. In addressing their concerns, he pinpointed God’s tender care for those needing reform through two parables. He spoke of a shepherd leaving 99 sheep to find one that had strayed and a woman sweeping her home to locate a single lost coin (see Luke 15:1–10). Both the shepherd and the woman, Jesus said, rejoiced at finding what had been lost and urged others to rejoice with them.
These word-pictures Jesus painted of God’s saving love were not only reassuring to those straying, but also rebuked the hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and pride that excluded itself from others in a mistaken sense of moral purity. Such self-satisfied superiority was far from the religion Jesus taught and lived. He evidenced the love he preached by healing the sick and helping those struggling with sin to turn their lives around. And that same power of God can still transform us today and free us from thoughts and behavior that miss the mark of expressing the goodness inherent in us all as God’s children. As the Bible says, “The Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him” (II Chronicles 30:9).
