November 16, 2022

Luke 15: 1 (NIV)

Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him.

Jesus doesn’t say, “Go, it isn’t sin anymore”; he says, “Go, and sin no more.”*

To the Jews of Jesus’ day, a “sinner” was anyone who wasn’t one of them. And apparently there was no lower form of life than a tax collector – they were their own stand-alone category of bad, perhaps because many of them were Jews who worked for their Roman oppressors. Aren’t we also guilty of prioritizing sins from bad to worst? Perhaps there’s even a level that includes “acceptable.” 

Philip Yancey, in his book, What’s so Amazing about Grace?, posed the question: How do we treat sinners? His focus was on how badly Christians treat certain categories of sinners. Allow me to illustrate: When you hear the word “sinner,” what’s the first thing that comes into your mind? Be honest. Was it a murderer – or was it a homosexual? Maybe we demonize the gay person because homosexuality is an ongoing lifestyle while murder (in many cases) is a one-time act. At any rate, we are guilty of treating some sinners with a greater degree of disdain. 

Jesus didn’t turn his back on even the “worst” sinners but he was never tolerant of any sin – including the ones on our list of acceptable iniquities - which brings us to another aspect of the question of how we treat sinners. Does your circle of influence include the greedy, the covetous, liars, and gluttons? Have you ever indicated to them that you don’t approve of their sinful behavior? Did Jesus tell anyone that they had picked an “okay” sin? No. He treated the adulterous woman kindly but he told her to stop sinning. We may not be comfortable with lumping our friend the tax cheat into the same category as a child molester, but Jesus’ behavior might lead us to conclude that he found hypocrisy to be the most heinous of sins (read Matthew chapter 23). 

Truth? 1) All sin is heinous and separates us from God. 2) We are all sinners. 3) Jesus loves all of us – the homosexual, the pedophile, the liar, and the hypocrite – and he died to prove it. It may be a cliché, but we must put it into action: hate the sin, love the sinner. It’s what Jesus would do. Let him show you how.

Do we really want our churches full of homosexuals, prostitutes, thieves, murderers? Or do we only want our kind – the self-righteous, the unforgiving, the unloving?*