Matthew 9:12-13 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This is a justly famous saying of Jesus, yet I think we tend to miss a good bit of the meaning. The fact is, all mankind has a fatal disease acquired genetically, so to speak: sin. Paul speaks of this several times, perhaps most succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15:22, made famous by being part of the libretto for The Messiah: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Jesus is the only Physician with a cure for this disease, but unless you recognize you have it, you won’t go to the doctor. It’s not that the Pharisees weren’t sinners, it was that they didn’t recognize they were sinners. The devil tries to twist this among believers, even, and say that it’s OK to sin because Jesus came to invite sinners. Even Paul had to deal with this issue, and did so extensively in Romans 6. We don’t have to sin in order to be called by Jesus, we have already sinned, so He is calling us to come and be healed, cleansed from our sin. There are only two attitudes that would keep us from coming to Jesus to be saved. The first is what Jesus addresses here, of failure to recognize and acknowledge that we need salvation. However, there is another lie of the devil that also keeps people from Christ, and that is that our sins are too horrible for Him to forgive. The only sin that can’t be forgiven is adamant rejection of Christ and His Spirit, and someone who is there isn’t going to care any more. As has been said, if you’re worried about whether you have committed the unforgivable sin, you haven’t committed it!

This is of course of vital importance to me, both in relation to my own salvation and spiritual growth and in relation to my reaching out to draw others to Christ. I just about made a shipwreck of my own life by failing to recognize my own sinfulness, and I urgently desire that others’ eyes would be opened to recognize their own need for Dr. Jesus. The Ebola virus is mild compared to the fatality rate for sin! I am an orderly in God’s hospital, or maybe a nursing assistant. I need to help people accept the diagnosis from Dr. Jesus, and I am to participate in the therapy after He performs the necessary heart surgery. If I try to perform the surgery myself (which I am sometimes tempted to do) everybody’s in trouble!

Father, thank You for allowing me to be part of Jesus’ “medical team.” Help me be effective as a nurse/therapist, but never try to usurp the place of the Physician. May this church be a hospital with a very high “recovery rate,” so that the believers won’t drag around but be invigorated by Your Spirit, actively drawing more and more people to You for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!