Jesus' Teaching

“Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can mean only one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to tax collectors and sinners, they must be more full of pharisees and teachers of the law than we’d like to think.”

                                                                                                                             Tim Keller in Prodigal God

As you’re at church today think about what Keller is saying. For me it’s one of those observations that hits me right between the eyes. Would the “tax collectors and sinners” of our day feel welcome at my church. Would I speak to them or look away? Would they hear a clear message of hope meant for people like them? Like Paul I am a chief of sinners but do I view myself as somehow better than someone else? 

Jesus’ mission was to seek and to save the lost. To do that, he spent a lot of time with the lost and opposing the self righteousness of the religious. Is your church and mine preaching the same message Jesus did? If so we should find ourselves surrounded by sinners…of whom I am the chiefest.