Attitudes Shaped by Grace | Day 31

“Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” (Luke 5:31-32, NIV)

Come on in, friends, and good morning. Picture the front doors of your church. Somewhere near them is a sign with the service times and perhaps the pastor’s name. No congregation we know of has ever posted a sign that says Healthy People Only.

Yet many of us have stood in the entryway and read one anyway, quietly sizing up who came in behind us. This morning we walk through those doors together and ask who they were built for.

Why Is That Person Here?

The question can form before we notice it. Someone slides into a pew whose marriage ended badly, who has not been in church in years, whose name was attached to a story that went around town, or who simply does not look like the rest of the row. Then the thought arrives: why is that person here? Do they not know what they have done? We would never say it aloud, and we would rarely admit we thought it.

The world has trained us for that question. It runs on showcases. We post our best pictures, put our best version forward at work, and learn early that every room is a place of evaluation. Without meaning to, we carry that training through the church doors, and the sanctuary becomes one more display case where everyone is expected to look finished.

Luke tells of a dinner that broke every rule of the showcase. Jesus called a tax collector named Levi, and Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. “Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’” (Luke 5:29-30, NIV). Jesus answered the complaint himself. “Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” (Luke 5:31-32, NIV). A doctor is not embarrassed to be seen with the sick. That is exactly where a doctor belongs. And when Jesus speaks of the righteous, he is not describing anyone who needs him less. He is describing people who were sure they were well.

Paul takes that category away from all of us. “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-24, NIV). The first half of that sentence removes every one of us from the display shelf. The second half, with the same word all, is the reason the doors are open at all. God declared the world righteous for the sake of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit brings each of us to receive it through faith, which he creates through the gospel.

So the question at the door tells us more about ourselves than about the person who walked in. For a moment we had counted ourselves among the healthy. Jesus speaks to that moment directly. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5, NIV). Jesus does not forbid helping a brother. He sets the order: the plank first, then the speck. The plank comes out the only way a plank ever comes out, as we bring it to him in repentance and receive his forgiveness. Then we see clearly, and what we see is not an intruder in our church but a fellow patient under the care of the same doctor.

Where Nobody Has to Pretend

A showcase forces everyone to pretend. A hospital is the one place where pretending makes no sense. No one sits in an exam room and hides the symptoms from the doctor. James points us the same way. “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16, NIV).

James is not making forgiveness depend on confessing to one another. Jesus Christ won our forgiveness before any of us said a word. What James describes is the healing that comes when a burdened conscience is brought into the light and hears that forgiveness spoken. That is why private confession remains in our churches, where our pastor, the servant the congregation has called, speaks Christ’s forgiveness to us personally. It is why a trusted brother or sister can listen, keep a confidence, pray with us, and point us back to God’s promises. The righteous person whose prayer is powerful is not a spiritual elite. It is any believer declared righteous through faith in Christ, which includes the person in the next pew.

Paul shows us the voice of someone who has stopped performing. “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1:15, NIV). Paul wrote that line years into his ministry, and he wrote it in the present tense. The apostle stood in line with every other patient, glad to be there, because the doctor had already taken his case. A hospital welcomes the sick because it intends to heal them. Jesus calls sinners to repentance, and the Holy Spirit does that healing through the Word preached and the Sacraments given. The welcome is never permission to stay sick. It is the doorway to the cure.

This is the new life the Spirit produces in people Christ has already forgiven. The question at the door begins to change. Instead of why is that person here, we catch ourselves thinking, I am so glad that person is here. A simple habit fits that change. When someone walks in whom we did not expect, we cross the aisle after the service, shake their hand, and tell them we are glad they came. And when we are the one carrying something we have kept hidden, we stop polishing the display case and speak with our pastor or a trusted believer, and we hear again what Christ has already done for us.

The sign Jesus Christ hangs over the door of his church is the one he spoke at Levi’s table. He came for the sick. He did not keep a safe distance from our sin. He carried it, along with the sin of every person who has ever walked through any door, to the cross, and he paid for all of it with his life. He rose from the dead, and he still meets us in his Word and Sacraments with the only medicine that heals a sinner. Because of Jesus Christ, none of us has to perform in his house. We came in sick, he has made us his own, and the Spirit he sends keeps healing us side by side with everyone else he came to save.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I confess that I have stood at the doors of your house and quietly asked why someone else was there, as though I had walked in healthy. Forgive me for studying the speck in my neighbor’s eye while I ignored the plank in my own. Thank you that all have sinned and all are justified freely by your grace through Christ Jesus, and that your grace has reached me.

Lord Jesus, thank you for coming for the sick and for sitting down with sinners like me. Thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit, who heals me through your Word and your Sacraments. Give me a glad welcome for every person who walks into my church, and the humility to sit beside them as a fellow patient. When I carry a sin I have kept hidden, give me the courage to bring it into the light and to hear your forgiveness spoken to me. Make your church a place where no one has to pretend. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

It is a gift to begin the morning in God’s Word with you. The next devotion speaks to everyone who has been hurt inside a church, and to the Savior who still calls them home.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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