Jesus Is ______: Find a New Way to Be Human

by Judah Smith

Judah has helped me be more consistent in seeking God’s will and trusting the Lord daily. As our friendship has grown, he has taught me to be a better husband, better dad, better friend, better listener, everything—except maybe a better golfer! How does he do it? He just shares Jesus. That’s what gets Judah started and keeps him going. He wants to help people meet Jesus and become more like Jesus.

Those are stereotypes, of course. Some are true and some are not. But none of them tell the whole story about what it means to be a pastor, a Christian, or even a good person.

Really, it’s not about not at all. Christianity is about Jesus.

Apparently, Jesus gets a reaction out of people.

Within months of launching the campaign, we realized something. Jesus Is _____ was more than a clever campaign or a marketing mantra. It was the mission of our church.

It doesn’t bother me if you don’t believe that, so I hope it doesn’t bother you that I do believe it.

None of us has the whole truth, including me, but we can learn from each other. The Bible is meant to be down-to-earth. It was written for real people facing real issues.

Sometimes I crack myself up; but laughter is biblical, so I feel almost holy laughing at my own jokes.

That will delight some of you and frustrate others. I have the attention span of a five-year-old, which is actually fine by me, because five-year-olds enjoy life a heck of a lot more than most adults.

Pray for me.

We enjoy the feelings of condescending pity or self-righteous outrage.

The problem with the “if God can save . . .” statement is that it implies a rating system for sins.

It’s an unspoken, often culture-driven, and arbitrary badness scale (or goodness scale, depending on whether we are rating others or ourselves).

On our scale, we label small sins, medium-small sins, medium sins, medium-large sins, large sins, extra-l...

Then we see someone with medium to large sins, and we get more nervous. We really have to pray for her. Her life is going downhill fast. God is going to have to get her attention the hard way. She really needs to work on fixing herself so she can get closer to God.

When we come across a supersize sinner, someone who commits the big sins, we just shake our heads in hyper-pious pity.

Nowhere in the Bible, however, do we find God distinguishing between levels of sin. God doesn’t share our rating system. To him, all sin is equally evil, and all sinners are equally lovable. Obviously sins have different consequences: some will get you incarcerated or your face pu...

Jesus didn’t have a rating system for sin, either. He was willing to accept anyone, to love anyone.

That’s important. Here’s the story, straight from the Bible:

But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,”

Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.” (Luke 19:1–10)

Interesting backstory: Israelites of Jesus’s day looked at tax collectors as thieves and pimps. Tax collectors were Jews who worked for the Roman government, which ruled Israel at the time. Their job was to collect taxes from their own people and hand the money over to the hated foreign power.

quota. So Zacchaeus and his fellow tax-collecting traitors would make up tax amounts on the fly. Zacchaeus was a professional cheat, an embezzler. He took mo...

He’s getting a lot of followers; a lot of guys are talking about him. I’m curious.”

No, he just wanted to check out the popular guy. Zacchaeus was all about status. You don’t become a tax collector and then a chief tax collector and not like money and status. He was famous in a negative sense, but famous nonetheless.

They say the sweetest sound to a human being’s ears is the sound of his or her own name.

I can imagine Zacchaeus looking into the most compassionate eyes he’s ever seen and thinking, Does Jesus know who I am? Does he know who is around my dinner table? Does he know what we do for a living? Does he know what paid for his fish? Does he know how I paid for this house? He must . . . but he doesn’t reject me.

care. A moment with Jesus changed everything.

It wasn’t what Zacchaeus talked about—it was the person he talked about it with. It was about being with Jesus. What changed Zacchaeus? Biblical principle? Personal devotion? Religious duty and deeds? No—just a few moments with God in the flesh. We don’t even have a record of anyone telling Zacchaeus he needed to repent or give the money back. But something came over this man when he encountered Jesus.

I may not be short in stature, but I’m short spiritually, in my own ability and my own capacity.

Even if I want to get to Jesus, even if I want to see Jesus, I can’t see past myself. I can’t see past my sin, past my distractions, past my ego. How do we try to reach Jesus? We run faster and we climb proverbial trees of religious actions. We think, I’ll get to Jesus. I’ll impress Jesus with who I am.

I believe most people have a sense of inadequacy and failure deep within themselves. No matter how hard they try or what they accomplish, they know they are in a dark place. They are short in a spiritual sense. They have sinned and come short of God’s glorious standard. So they think, I’ll run faste...

That’s not what saved Zacchaeus. It was God’s mercy. It was God’s grace. It was God’s initiative.

Jesus told Zacchaeus to hurry, and he tells us the same thing. “Hurry down from religion. Hurry down from traditions. Quit trying to pick yourself up.

quintessential

antithesis

I wish I could have seen the look on his friends’ faces. If there’s hope for Zacchaeus, there must be hope for me too!

Then Jesus summed up his life mission: “I’m here to find and help lost people. That’s why I’ve come.”

But

Jesus

said over and over that he came for the broken, the bad, the addicted, the bound, the decei...

propensities

cynical.

Jesus is not your accuser. He’s not your prosecutor. He’s not your judge. He’s your friend and your rescuer.

Like Zacchaeus, just spend time with Jesus.

Don’t hide from him in shame or reject him in self-righteousness. Don’t allow the opinions of other peopl...

Get to know him for yourself, and let the goodness of God change you...

Matthew’s first encounter with Jesus reveals that when it comes to sinners, God has two categories. Just two. Matthew 9:9–13 says,

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him.

disreputable