After Pentecost Devotional - Day 18

“Go and learn what the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘Instead of offering sacrifices to me, I want you to be merciful to others.’ I didn’t come to invite good people to be my followers. I came to invite sinners.” Matthew 9:13

Well we know that the gospel is supposed to be good news for sinners. We know the message is about salvation and redemption for the undeserving. We also forget that this message of grace and mercy continually arrives to meet our needs. If we enter salvation by grace, we live and remain in it by grace. Depending on grace leaves us no latitude to exclude anyone due to our perceptions of inadequacy or some label of disqualification.

The flip side of this is that since we are in continual need of grace and mercy, we are likewise responsible to offer grace and mercy to all people, both within and beyond the bounds of the gospel and acceptable society. It becomes all too easy to settle into a comfortable system that tells us who is worthy, counting ourselves among the inner circle. The gospel of Jesus, however, abolishes such thinking by declaring that no one is worthy, but that all are accepted by God through grace, mercy, and love.

Our mission is not to exclude and categorize people into appropriate and unacceptable categories. Our mission is to be just as loving, gracious, and merciful as God has shown in Jesus' life and ministry. It is Jesus' example of accepting those society, and most especially religious society, has cast aside as undeserving that should claim our attention. It is Jesus' example and instructions to cast a wider net of acceptance that should become the pattern of our lives.

Believing ourselves holier than others may build us up psychologically, but it distances us from the gospel of Christ Jesus. It removes us from depending upon grace, encouraging us to depend upon the character of our actions, instead. Beyond the fact that we can never become worthy of God by being good enough, we miss the whole point of the gospel message. If I am to relate intimately to God, I must do so in relation to God's own character. That character is the very embodiment of grace, mercy, and love.

Not only to I miss the point of the gospel by classing myself in superiority to others, in so doing I actually distance myself from the standing I have before God. When I let go of grace, I let go of God. When I let go of mercy, I let go of my standing before God that is based on the very mercy I am ignoring. When I let go of God's love as sufficient for my salvation and reconciliation, I let go of God who has come to reconcile me in my broken state. I let go of the entire message of Jesus Christ.

We don't need to be superior to other to come to Christ. In fact, the only way to come to Christ is to deny any claims to superiority. When we degrade others to build ourselves up, what we are actually doing is tearing ourselves down by destroying grace, mercy, and love as all-sufficient for reconciliation with God. If we will not treat others as God has treated us, we brush aside salvation completely. Jesus came to invite sinners, let us not exclude ourselves from the purpose of our redemption.

Determine to express the extent of God's acceptance of those we would reject by accepting people without discrimination.

"Lord, help me understand better my reliance upon you, extending your grace to all."


—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
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