This man receiveth sinners

Our Lord was unlike any other ‘Rabbi’ of his day. His knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures was different from theirs, even at the age of twelve when He astounded men with His understanding. ‘How is it that this man has learning, never having studied [at one of our schools]?’ they queried. His authority was unlike theirs too, teaching with a quiet, dignified, ‘I say unto you’ which they could not match. His method was different as well. He made things so easy to understand when they needed to be so, using everyday things He saw round about Him to illustrate divine truths, whereas they made everything so complicated and hard to understand. Yet, He was winsome with it all.

The result was that the common people, those unversed in scripture, heard Him gladly and flocked to listen to Him. There were always crowds to hear and to be healed. He seemed to be able to soften hearts hardened by sin, to bring understanding where there was confusion, to draw out faith where there was none, and to bring to repentance the most unrepentant. He was a Man of the people. Where other teachers withdrew into their self-righteous huddles, refusing to touch and be touched by the mass of people, our Lord loved to sit among such, touching the leper, being touched by the harlot, eating meals in the homes of outcasts, and picking up children in His arms. The self-righteous of His day thought they insulted Him by calling Him the friend of sinners. ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them!’ they exclaimed. ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know what sort of woman this is’, they said, with the curl of the lip.

The basic problem was that men still looked on the outward, and only our Lord looked on the heart. He saw the pride and arrogance of the self-righteous, dressed in their symbolic whites, but He also saw the hypocrisy of their hearts and turned away from it all. Yet, He also saw the repentant hearts, and grieving souls of those who outwardly were far from God, yet who heard His word, and whose hearts burned within them. He had not come ‘to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’. How glad we are that it is so! ‘Jesus, the sinner’s friend, we hide ourselves in Thee’, CHARLES WESLEY.