With all the criticism and controversy surrounding Scripture and Christianity, there is little doubt that Jesus knowingly and willingly submitted Himself to death on the cross. History records the practice was invented by the Persians and perfected by the Romans. For 500 years Romans kept this practice, mostly for slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians, and foreigners –rarely for Roman citizens. Crucifixion is quite possibly the most painful death ever invented by man. From the practice of crucifixion, the English word ‘excruciating’ is derived.
A Christian is not a Christian until they wrestle with this extraordinary event in history and determine its significance for them on a personal level. Going to church doesn’t make anyone a Christian, neither does good or nice behavior. Participation in religious traditions or rituals does not make you a Christian. Christian salvation was never meant to be behavior-oriented.
In Luke 5:32, after Jesus calls his first disciples, after he heals a leper and a paralyzed man, He sits with His followers and shares a meal with them. The religious leaders of the day are appalled with the company He keeps. But Jesus tells them, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
There are some key words in this statement:
COME – God Himself came to earth, in the person of Jesus, to announce His coming kingdom and to invite all to join Him. He is the first resurrected New Human in that Kingdom and we are all invited to follow and join Him – forever. There are two important deadlines involved: First, His call to you as an individual, is during your physical life on this earth, and second, His call to all humanity will end when He returns. A Christian knows the importance of both. They understand that God came to earth, they heard the good news of Salvation through faith in Jesus, and they responded to the call. Their response to believe in this incredible display of God’s love for them is their beginning of a new spiritual life. They are born again. They believe Jesus will come again and that changes their perspective and their allegiance for the rest of their lives. They are compelled to share this salvation opportunity with others.
RIGHTEOUS – Right living according to God’s design is not something that any human has been able to live up to. From Adam and Eve in the garden, the chosen nation of Israel who defy Him again and again in the Old Testament, King David – a man after God’s own heart, King Hezekiah – a man blessed with 15 more years to his life, Jesus’ own disciple Peter – who denies Jesus three times or Paul – a Pharisee living with strict adherence to the Jewish laws… to us, you and me. As Paul tells us in Romans 3:11 – None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. Righteousness is a term that fully encapsulates the relationship that God designed between humanity and Himself. Righteousness is understood in the very nature of the triune God – no distance between the three-person God, yet each fulfilling a distinct, necessary, and complementary divine function. (Genesis 1:27) Our finite minds can barely grasp the concept, yet we are told that we are created in His image and designed to be with Him forever. If there is any distance between God and me, there is something that is keeping righteousness from being fully revealed in me. Consider how the whole Christian message would collapse if Jesus had said, just once… let MY will be done. He didn’t. We shouldn’t either. He was faithful to the Father in praying, let THY will be done… just as He taught us to pray in Matthew 6:9-10
Jesus didn’t come to call the righteous. If there were any righteous, they wouldn’t need Jesus’ salvation. If you are tempted to think you can be or already are righteous, you are believing a lie. Be careful of where you are hearing such a dangerous message and ask God to show you the truth – the truth is found in His Word. It is a path of evil that tempts you to think that you don’t need the salvation found in Jesus.
SINNERS – This is easier to understand and accept when RIGHTEOUSNESS is contemplated. Sin has historically been used by one person or group to accuse another, just as we read the Pharisees doings in Luke 5:30. This is the meaning of the plank metaphor in Matthew 7:3-5! “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention the plank in your own eye?” Sin can be anything that keeps us or others away from God. Sometimes we can’t even see sin for what it is. Especially when sin can be the ‘good’ things in life: hard work, dedicated service to others, commitment to relationships and family members, tolerance of others, compromising on truth to avoid conflict or hurt feelings. While those things may be good, if the motivation is self-oriented instead of God-oriented, they’re sinful. Even good behavior that does not glorify God but highlights us is sin. Sin is that thing we hold onto that keeps us from trusting God and His love to save us from the penalty of our sin. The Bible makes it clear that we are all born sinners. Either we accept that or we don’t… God gives us the dignity of making that choice. All through Christian history we like to throw out Jesus’ response from John 8:7 about casting stones… we use it as a defense when someone wants to judge us on our behavior. We want to defend ourselves by pointing out their behavior. Then from either guilt or shame, we try to address our behavior – and usually fail! Wisdom tells us that our behavior is the end result of our thoughts – Mark 7:21 or Ephesians 2:3. Elisabeth Elliot outlined it perfectly, ‘Spiritual strongholds begin with a thought. One thought becomes a consideration. A consideration develops into an attitude, which leads then to action. Action repeated becomes a habit, and a habit establishes a ‘power base for the enemy’, that is a stronghold.’
If you cannot accept that you’re a sinner, then you reject the grace of God to forgive your sins, you reject His call to you for eternal salvation. 💔 Many people cannot, and this breaks my heart – they believe the lies that tell them that they’re perfect just the way they are. Some even claim God’s attribute of being the Creator to justify any sinful condition! (God made me this way.) What they cannot see or refuse to hear is the message that God loves them in spite of their sinfulness and He desires to be with them forever. However, sin must be addressed, for He is a God of justice and all the wrong in this world is addressed at the cross, for those that trust God and the work of Jesus Christ. For those that will not believe and will not give their sins to Jesus, that judgment is addressed at the end of time. Warning – Paul gives this very description for a sign of the end times in 2 Timothy 4:3 when people will turn away from sound doctrine and will gather around themselves only teachers that satisfy their own desires. Peter also in 2 Peter 2 warns us of false teachers. In this day of social media, podcasts, YouTube videos, 24/7 television, and the many other internet-based communication platforms, there is no shortage of opinions and declarations being marketed as ‘truth’. To further complicate matters, we now hear we are living in a post-truth era… or truth is relative… we must be aware that we live in fertile ground for false teaching. For Christians who trust Jesus as The Truth, we stand firm with Him, no matter what others say, even when they throw stones at us. In John 14:6 when He said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,’ we believe Him.
REPENTANCE – Perhaps because of my own blinders, I can’t think of anything other than pride that would keep a person away from the gift of repentance. Yes, repentance is a gift. Once you accept that you are a sinner, the opportunity to repent is a gift that opens you to receive His forgiveness. Acts 11:18 Repentance is the act of first admitting to God, humbly, ‘I was wrong.’ (Like David expressed in Psalm 51) Then, the hard work of turning away from sin and towards His gift of eternal life begins. True repentance is not just words. Similar to the secular world, hypocrisy shows! No one wants to be around the person that only talks-the-talk, we are inspired by those who walk-the-walk… those that practice what they preach. It is hard work, because we still have to live in a sinful world but we now desire to live differently than we did before. (See David’s thoughts on this in Psalm 139 or Isaiah 55:8-9) People will notice – they are supposed to – we’re light in the darkness now. Don’t let anyone deceive you, it is hard to do that, actually it is impossible to do that without the power of the Spirit. People will ridicule, insult, scoff, slander, and doubt, and we are called to stand firm. Take heart, they did the same to Jesus… they did the same to the Apostles… The world will test you, too, and God will let them. Again, He is giving us the dignity of making our own choices while promising to be with us, strengthen us, and help us grow. 1 Corinthians 10:13
Let us review and reflect again on what Jesus did and why.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Why would Jesus have to say this? Didn’t John the Baptist have a similar message? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2) John the Baptist may have been the last of the Old Testament prophets. God’s message has not changed. We all need to repent. All of God’s prophets delivered this same message. So, Jesus too, speaks the words of the Father. But Jesus’ actions, especially His voluntary death on the cross, is a revelation of God’s love and His willingness to save us when it is quite apparent that we cannot save ourselves.
In other words, as sin influenced humanity into a group of people that could not believe God’s Word and demanded that He show us… that He do something… that He walk-the-walk… He did! He will not do that again. Luke 23:44-46 John 19:30 Jesus gave us this knowledge in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Luke 16:19-31 And with the work of Jesus completed at the cross, the curtain separating man from the presence of God was torn, a short time later the Holy Spirit fills the apostles, a Pharisee named Saul is appointed to teach this message to the Gentiles, and the physical temple in Jerusalem is destroyed – ending the practice of slaughtering a substitutionary animal for the atoning sacrifice for human sin.
The significance of the cross is astounding. Statements that Jesus made in the Gospels, like the well-known John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, reveal that Jesus is fully aware of all the prophesies of the Old Testament and His own fulfillment of them. He is trying to make it clear to us that as sinners, we deserve the penalty of sin, which is death – the end of life – the complete removal from God’s presence, forever. Yet, His love for us drives Him to provide a substitute for the death that we deserve! And it doesn’t matter if your sin is a speck or a plank. YOUR SIN deserves death. My sin 😣 sins deserved the same punishment – the death penalty! The moment I understood that God proved His love for unworthy me, I cried. The beatings He took, the suffering He endured, the excruciating pain He experienced, without complaint, so that His body could take my punishment and His blood could wash me clean was the day I was reborn.
Jesus didn’t come to save the Jewish people from their worldly oppression – Roman rule at that time. He came to save us from eternal death and bring us new life as part of a New Humanity. We read Acts and the New Testament to remember this. Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean we expect Jesus to save us from all our worldly woes… far from it. We remember that this world is still inhabited by evil forces and we stay in Christ our King, to avoid the worst, to have His peace during our trials, to thank Him and to serve Him each day that we are given. And when these mortal bodies perish, we, believers, are received forever by Him and with Him.
When we see our sins taken by Jesus at the cross, there is freedom and there is peace. There is nothing more liberating than losing the fear of death. We walk boldly through each day He gives us because we know He is with us! As we grow in this new life with Him, we grow in our desire for more of Him. Death loses it power over us – a Christian grows to lose their fear of death. A Christian remembers that Jesus already died for us and He started the new humanity in heaven. When our earthly lives end, we start that eternal life with Him. My very soul cries… BRING IT!!!! But He reminds me that my Father has determined my days and when I wake each morning, He reminds me, ‘Not yet.’
And I discipline myself to respond, ‘If not yet, then show me Your will today and strengthen me to follow You in all my thoughts, words, and actions… in the might name of my Lord Jesus. Amen.’