Jesus Is ______: Find a New Way to Be Human

by Judah Smith

“Why does your teacher eat with such scum?”

When Jesus heard this, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.”

‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’

For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who...

Like Zacchaeus, Matthew was a tax collector. Everywhere he went, he was hated, feared, and rejected. Until he met Jesus. Matthew never forgot the inexplicable willingness of this man to look past his occupation and to see him as a person.

people who think they are righteous and people who know they are sinners.

We either pretend we don’t need him or we acknowledge we do.

The common denominator is that we all need help. The catch is that we don’t all admit it.

we often prop up our self-esteem by looking at people who do supposedly...

In reality, for many people, the greatest hindrance to receiving the grace of God is not their scandalous sins—it’s their empty good deeds.

think, I’m a morally sound person. I’m doing pretty well. I don’t need help.

If we can’t be honest with ourselves, we’ll never be honest with God.

When we find Pharisees in the Bible, they are usually doing one thing: pointing out sinners. Condemning people was part of their daily routine. They had made careers out of ridiculing broken souls. It was the ultimate job security.

The Pharisees were zealous for the law, but they didn’t understand the love of God.

They imposed judgment without mercy, punishment without love, criticism without understanding. In the name of hating sin, the...

aloofness

The measuring stick of their goodness was the badness of the people they rejected.

Jesus made a point of seeking out sinners and befriending them. He wasn’t concerned with his reputation. He wasn’t trying to prop up his image by putting others down. He was God and he was perfect, yet he declared by his actions that he did not condemn the worst of sinners.

sanctimonious

pseudo-spirituality.

Notorious sinners didn’t kill Jesus. Religious people did.

I find that righteous indignation comes a lot easier than humility and compassion.

Mentally chastising the bad deeds of other people is more comfortable than dealing with my own.

But think for a moment: those evil people most likely don’t see themselves as evil. If they start to feel pangs of guilt, they just look a little further down the holiness food chain, find someone worse off, and continue to justify themselves.

Here’s what I do. I make up laws or rules to fit my standard of living, then I judge you by them.

If you follow my rules, you are a good person. If you break my rules, you are a bad person. If you have stricter rules than me, you’re a prude who needs to lighten up. It’s so convenient. And so deluded. If our definition of sin is “doing bad things,” then we all agree that sin exists. People do bad things. Even if my definition of bad differs a bit from someone else’s, we still agree that rape is wrong. Genocide is evil. Racial discrimination is appalling.

The problem is that we don’t like to include ourselves in the same category as rapists and murderer...

When confronted with our badness, we do the National Geographic th...

don’t mean to insult anyone. But freedom starts with honesty. We aren’t doing ourselves any favors by defining ourselves as good and others as bad. Let’s just agree that we all need help, that we are all in this together.

The good news is that Jesus came to reveal a God who defines us not by our actions but by his love.

sordid

my rules distance me from bad people.

If I separate myself from sinners, I don’t have to deal with their pain. I don’t have to walk in their shoes or love them or let my heart break with theirs. I don’t have to get my hands dirty helping them put the pieces of their lives back together. I can justify rudeness and indifference when my heart should bleed with compassion. I can ignore the fact that but for the grace of God I would be doing exactly what they are doing. Take it a step further. If I separate myself from sinners, I can afford the luxury of celebrating their punishment. When they get what’s coming to them, I feel a sadistic sense of pleasure. They deserved it, after all.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that we abolish judgment in society—just that we abolish judgmentalism. If I separate myself from sinners, I don’t risk my own reputation. I remain a member in good standing of the holier-than-thou club, where we sit around congratulating each other on how much better we look than everyone else while agreeing that the world is going to hell in a handbasket (whatever a handbasket is) and com...

Most telling of all, if I separate myself from bad people, I feel better about myself. Because compared t...

Again, please don’t misunderstand. I don’t think rules are horrible. It’s how we use them that can be horrible. I have rules for my kids that are for their protection. Our society has ...

authority, order, justice, an...

We just have to remember that rules are not proof of our spirituality. If anything, they are proof of our sinfulness, a reminder that we have a tendenc...

The Pharisees were so obsessed with fulfilling the minutiae of the law that they missed the point of the law:...

Jesus was obsessed with showing mercy to those who least deserved it. He was passionate about giving hope to hopeless people. He was committed to showing grace to the worst of sinners. And if I’m honest, that includes me.

still wrestle with wrong thoughts. I still get impatient with my kids and treat my wife rudely. I still make decisions out of ego and evil rather than love. Whether I am better than you or worse than you really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I recognize my need for Jesus.

I need to remember that I am still desperately in need of Jesus’s grace.

Jesus befriends the worst of sinners, so Jesus befriends me.

disreputable

“Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” Jesus said. “Sick people do.” That’s why he spent his time with the needy, the helpless, and the depraved.

He came down to their level because they could never rise to his.

He wasn’t out to prove how good he was or how...

He just wanted to offer ...

Jesus isn’t just a friend of sinners: he is only the ...

Jesus is the friend of people who are willing to admit that ...