Who Needs a Doctor?
I sure am glad that God has gifted some people to become doctors to help us when we get sick. God is the Healer, but often, He uses human agents and medicine to provide us with healing. At other times He works miracles. Either way, He gets the glory for our healing. The same is true for our sin-sickness. God is the Redeemer. Jesus is the only sacrifice for our sins. He is the Only Source of forgiveness. He came to this earth in love, because He wanted to set us free from our sin-sickness. The truth is that we all have this deadly disease, so we all need Him. However, when Jesus came the religious leaders of the Jews thought they had to remain clean and not come into contact with sinful people. Therefore, they criticized Jesus for eating with tax collectors and harlots. On one occasion when Jesus was eating with a group like this, and He knew the Jewish leaders were being critical, He spoke up to set them straight. (Mark 2:17) He asked them, "Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick?" Of course, the answer is the sick. Then, Jesus declared to them all that He had come to invite the sin-sick to come to Him for forgiveness, not to those who were spiritually-fit. I pray we will learn from what Jesus did and what He said.
Do we really have a heart for those who are sinful and need the Lord? Do we intentionally reach out to them and spend time with them? Do we make it our aim to share the truth with them and invite them to come to Jesus for forgiveness? If not, we are not being like Jesus the way we should. Studies have been done that show that the longer we are a Christian, the fewer non-Christian friends we have. In other words, we hang out with the spiritually-fit more and more. Yes, we need Christian fellowship, and it is right to worship together and study the Bible together to sharpen each other. However, we are supposed to be becoming more like Jesus in the process. If we are, we will be eating with sinful people, so we can love them and invite them to Jesus for salvation from their sins.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read Mark 3-5.