Following Judah's Lion

Sinners

Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear. And the Pharisees and scribes murmered, saying, This man receives sinners...

And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then He says to them, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death, tarry here and watch with me”.

The Son of God, the All Sufficient Christ, is sorrowful even unto death. It would be easy to dismiss this and limit it to Jesus becoming anxious about His soon coming fate, and I am sure that mystery lives in this narrative in ways far beyond our pitiful descriptions. God is soon going to die, that alone is such a pristine mystery that no one except the Godhead can approach and enter. The death of God and the glory of its reality is known to only three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But this sorrow, this heaviness of the Lord’s heart must have omnisciently traveled in many different directions. As He prepares to prepare the path through which sinners may walk and gain eternal life, is the Lord saddened by the thought that most will reject Him and seal their fate? Does He see what men will do to His atonement in the coming years? Is the heart of God heavy with the knowledge that sin will continue to increase and mankind will mostly turn their eyes and trust on themselves? Who can say for certain, the Scriptures only disclose His unimaginable sorrow.

And as I read those words and the transparency of my Lord’s Words about His heaviness, I cannot sometimes, and this is one of those times, become overwhelmed with emotion and sadness at how the church has turned their backs upon the Risen Christ and followed after the fairer things of this world. We desire the marriage feast of Cana, we do not seek Gethsemane. Can we not feel our Lord’s heart today as He grieves with heartsick jealousy over His bride? Sure the world pursues its idols, but His bride? Where is the broken love that considers obedience a privilege? Always wanting more, eternal life now being a fringe benefit of knowing Christ.

And feel the grief as the church, both true and false, compete in a back and forth with God’s Word being the very shuttlecock in the game of doctrinal badminton. And while stepping into the great honor of defending the faith and its Author, we are so often blind to our own sin. Please do not always stand behind the mirror, but step in front and allow God the Spirit to reflect the length of the journey you and I have yet to traverse in our own quest to be like Him. What would be our state if there were no false teachers, no apostates, and no doctrinal liberals? What then would be our platform for being like Christ? Where then would be our evidence before the Father if we could not conveniently present our valiant stand against doctrinal erosion as proof that we are pursuing Him and Him alone?

Could we provide incontrovertible proof that we have shared, felt, and sacrificially lived the love of God before even our enemies? Would our private speech betray us before God and His love? And if God would filet our hearts open for inspection, would humility be even an ingredient? And if He who holds the balances would place our judgment on one side and our grace on the other, would the judgment sink with the convicting weight that exposes who we really are? And with all this unveiling of our shortcomings, would the angels of God wonder why we never were moved with the weight of our own shallowness?

Oh no, not doctrinal shallowness, for in that ocean we fancy ourselves blue whales, but in the ocean of pursuing Christ in all His Incarnate glory and beseeching Him to polish us into a reflecting glass that shines Him and not us. Do not dismiss following Christ as something easy and comfortable, and just some stale and academic doctrinal test. Following Jesus and allowing His life to live through you is the zenith of all spiritual mysteries. It is much easier than we usually recognize to get caught up with living us and not Him.

Do we accept criticism, outrageous and unjust, with the grace that our Lord showed when they spat upon His face? Are we quick to answer a heretic or quicker to pray? Do we as defenders of the faith ever enter into the heaviness of our own hearts over the sometimes pitiful energy we put into our own pursuit of Him? Is truth our God or is our God truth?

But look! The school of the prophets is full but Gethsemane seems almost empty. The truth tellers are legion but the weepers are little in numbers. We have made arguing over what is sin a post graduate class, when in reality its all sin without Him. Every thought, every idea, every purchase, every life is a life of sin without Him. Gay and straight, married and divorced, rich and poor, male and female, it is all vanity and sinful without Him. And yet instead of our hearts being heavy with grief for their redemption, we inspect their sin and worse yet some make it some kind of sordid ministry to trot out the sins of sinners and claim some discernment when all you’ve done is exhibit your own Mosaic self righteousness.

And we as believers, as followers, and as imitators of Gethsemane’s Prayer Warrior should fall on our faces before the Gracious God who plucked us from the fire and placed our feet in His’ Son’s redemptive safety. The whole world runs toward a judgment about which no man can fully fathom, and our calling is His good news to these blinded sinners, the same blinded sinners around whose campfire we once warmed our lives. Our Loving Lord identified with these lost sinners and became of no reputation because of them and can we do any less? He cries over Jerusalem, the city of His death, and why then do we attack sinners as wicked enemies of our moralistic lifestyles? It is because we are us and not Him, but that is not God’s will.

God’s will is sinners, His heart is sinners, His gospel is sinners, and His cross is sinners. So the church is not some museum of perfect saints, inviting people to see our petrified and robotic lifestyles and claim we’ve arrived. No, the church, the Lord’s body has two distinctive pursuits and desires. Both these desires are interconnected and one runs into the other. The first and foremost is our journey and passion to seek and follow and obey and worship…Him. Jesus is our beginning and our end. He is our very life and without Him we have nothing. Forgiveness and repentance, comfort and conviction, worship and service, prayer and praise, learning and teaching, all of it and more flows from Him to every saved seeker.

But when you enter His throne room, His presence, you will be changed. No one can remain the same in His presence and if it is indeed Him, you can never be satisfied with anything and anyone but Him. And your passion will be to please Him and all He desires and all He commands. Listen as He speaks to you, what will He say? What prophetic utterance will He grant you? What mystery will He reveal? What does He desire from you, what is His command to you? Your eyes are fixed and your ears attentive to hear what might come from His lips. He looks at you and leans forward, and as He begins to speak His nail pierced hand covers His heart. And you hear Him say one word. What word is this, and what does He want from me, anything and I will make His desire my own.

“Sinners”

Sinners? That is what He desires, sinners? The God of all creation desires sinners? Oh my, but why? He is so holy and so august and so complete in Himself and yet He yearns for sinners? What condescension is this and what could ever provide a sufficient explanation for what Christ seeks? The entire world fights and hates and kills and let’s children die with food available on other tables and yet this Redeemer thirsts for sinners. Ungodly at our best and yet He calls for sinners. In the highways and the hedges and the byways, go He says and call to me sinners. No, no, Lord, not this, not sinners. The eternal paradox, Jesus did not call the righteous, He cries for sinners. And not just sinners who have blended into society, no, this Savior invites the most vile and rebellious of sinners to His table.

Blasphemers, violent, murderers, adulterers, no sinner will be turned away who hears his voice. The Holy wants the unholy, and with such passion that His heart is heavy with this divine mission. The Father anoints the Son, the Son pays the price, and the Spirit descends to seek out sinners. So seek Christ in all you do, and you will discover God will use you to bring to Him His ultimate desire…

sinners.