Mark 1:14-15
Jesus Announces the Good News
14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Mark 2:15-17
Jesus Came for Sinners
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Acts 4:12
Jesus is Our Only Salvation
12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.
When I think of Jesus, I think of comfort, yet He is not One that talked a lot about comfort...He talked about us sinning and that we needed to repent...He proclaimed the Good News of God...He talked a lot about God and forgiveness and forgiving...And because of our sinful ways, we needed Someone to forgive us...So as we think about Jesus and comfort, in the short term there is not this normal way of thinking about comfort, but in the long term He gives us an unspeakable way of comfort...
C. S. Lewis wrote in his book Mere Christianity, that Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness...It, therefore, has nothing (as far as Lewis knew) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness...It is only after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that Moral law and put yourself wrong with that Power - it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk to you...When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor...When you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about...They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it...They offer an explanation of how God can be this Impersonal Mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also be a Person...They tell you how the demands of this Moral law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself becomes a Man to save man from the disapproval of God...
So in the end we need a Savior because we cannot meet the Absolute Moral laws that Jesus could follow...We sin and therefore need a Savior...He is our Salvation...
C. S. Lewis further wrote that he quite agrees that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort...But it does not begin in comfort; it beings in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay...In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it...If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair...
When we realize we sin and need a Savior is a part of this dismay that Lewis is talking about...And Jesus tells us that He came for those who sin...He does not say, as Lewis tells us, that the people who do not believe they sin...As Lewis put it Jesus has nothing (as far as he knew) to say to people who do not know they have done anything wrong to repent and to those who do not feel that they need any forgiveness...So let us come to the realization that we sin and have a sinful nature...And that He came for us and our sins and died on the cross for us is of great comfort...