We are right in the middle of the Christmas season. Perhaps more than any other time of the year, those who do not know or believe in Jesus are curious as to what Christianity is all about. As we interact with those who do not believe, it is important to remember how Jesus dealt with those who were considered “a little rough around the edges.” I thought this quote might be helpful in this regard.

“It had been obvious to thinking men that contemporary Israel was far from being the people of God in any meaningful sense. But the usual remedies were withdrawal. The Qumran sect did this literally, withdrawing into the wilderness. The Pharisees did it in a different fashion, living among the people but separating themselves in thought. They despised others and thought of themselves as standing especially close to God. Such groups regarded ‘sinners’ as hopeless. Jesus’ attitude is in sharp contrast. For Him sinners are not to be rejected out of hand. They are to be sough out and ministered to. It is impossible to see in His warmth toward them anything less than an indication that they might enter into the salvation He came to bring. It is significant that His whole ministry was concerned with sinners, not with righteous men.”

-Leon Morris in The Cross in the New Testament

Too often, those who visit churches at Christmas come away feeling that they need to clean themselves up before coming back. I cannot detect that anyone felt this way who came to Jesus.

May we all be a friend to sinners this Christmas and all through the year.

” . . . I knew, because of my own feelings, there was something wrong with me, and I knew it wasn’t only me. I knew it was everybody. It was like a bacteria or a cancer or a trance. It wasn’t on the skin; it was in the soul. It showed itself in loneliness, lust, anger, jealousy, and depression. It had people screwed up bad everywhere you went – at the store, at home, at church; it was ugly and deep. Lots of singers on the radio were singing about it, and cops had jobs because of it. It was as if we were broken, I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, couldn’t love right, couldn’t feel good things for very long without screwing it all up. We were like gasoline engines running on diesel. I was just a kid so I couldn’t put words to it, but every kid feels it. (I am talking about the broken quality of life.) A kid will think there are monsters under his bed, or he will close himself in his room when his parents fight. From a very early age our souls are taught there is a comfort and a discomfort in the world, a good and bad if you will, a lovely and a frightening. There seemed to me to be too much frightening, and I didn’t know why it existed.”

– Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious thoughts on Christian Spirituality

The appeal made in Christian work nowadays is that we must keep ourselves fit for our work, we must not; we must be in the hands of God for God to do exactly what He likes with us, and that means disentanglement from everything that would hinder His purpose. If you want to remain a full-orbed grape you must keep out of God’s hands for He will crush you, wine cannot be had in any other way. The curse in Christian work is that we want to preserve ourselves in God’s museum; what God wants is to see where Jesus Christ’s men and women are. The saints are always amongst the unofficial crowd, the crowd that is not noticed, and their one dominant note is Jesus Christ.