Mark 2:15-17
Jesus Comes to Save 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.”
Luke 5:1-8
Simon Peter Admits He is a Sinful Man
1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. 2 He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.
4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”
5 Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”
6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.
8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”
Jesus makes it clear that He came for sinners...He makes this very clear when He was eating with tax collectors and sinners and the teachers of the law and the Pharisees saw Him eating with the sinners and tax collectors and so they questioned Him...They asked His disciples: “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?”...And when Jesus heard this He told them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick...I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”...
Jesus makes it clear that who He comes for are sinners...It is not those who think they are righteous...
C. S. Lewis said how we think of sin personally may have changed over the past two thousand years...And because we may think of ourselves as less a sinful creature, and with a less sinful nature as we have modernized, we may view God differently than our ancestors viewed Him...Has modern man put himself in the judges stand, and God in the enclosure in court where the defendant is placed?...Have we put God on the witness chair?...Lewis said, “The greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin...The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes, or Pagans, a sense of guilt...(That this was common among Pagans is shown by the fact that both Epicureanism and the mystery religions both claimed, though in different ways, to assuage it.)...Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News...It promised healing to those who knew they were sick...We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy...The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge...For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed...He is the judge: God is in the dock...He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it...The trial may even end in God’s acquittal...But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.”...