...If you want to be a Christ follower, you do as Christ. For those who say, “But doesn’t that mean acts of service, compassion, feeding and clothing? Doesn’t it mean acts of love?” Of course it does. But notice how Jesus conducted so many of His “acts of compassion.”
In John 4 when He meets the woman at the well, Jesus doesn’t carefully dance around her sin. He confronts it head on, telling her that He knows the man she is living with is not her husband. His act of compassion was speaking to her truthfully, and she went away amazed saying, “This man told me everything I ever did.” His miracle was to bring about a changed heart.
In Luke 7 when He forgives the sinful woman at the Pharisee’s home, Jesus again praises the woman for her faith that He alone can save her from her “many sins.” His act of love was speaking to her truthfully about her need for redemption, and she went away forgiven.
In Luke 5 when the paralytic is lowered in front of Jesus on his mat, what is the first thing that Jesus says? He tells the man his sins had been forgiven. And it was at that point that the teachers of the law and the Pharisees all went crazy, infuriated at the arrogance of a lowly carpenter’s son who would suggest He had the authority to forgive sins. So (please catch this) to prove He had the authority to do just that (something far more significant and important), Jesus told the man to pick up his mat and go:
“Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, ‘Why do you think such things? Is it easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? I will prove to you, then, that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.’ So he said to the paralyzed man, ‘I tell you, get up, pick up your bed, and go home!’
At once the man got up in front of them all, took the bed he had been lying on, and went home, praising God.”[i]
In other words, the entire purpose of the physical healing was to demonstrate He had the authority to do something He viewed as far more significant: forgive a man’s sins. When Jesus reminds those listening that He fraternized among the lost because, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” He was saying something very important about His mission…and therefore ours. If He was the doctor, what was the illness? Was it poverty? Was it homelessness? Was it hunger? Was it leprosy and disease? No.
The illness that demanded His cure was sin. His mission was to save people from their sins. Jesus always cared first about the spiritual health of the individual, and second about their physical health. Our mission is certainly amplified and strengthened by our commitment to caring for the physical needs of others. But it is not our urgent mission. To believe it is, is to ignore Jesus’ instruction, His example, and the focus of not just His ministry but the one He was commissioning us to fulfill.
One of the most well-known teachings of Jesus was His Parable of the Talents. In the account, Jesus tells of a wealthy landowner who left for a journey. But before going, he called in three of his servants, entrusting each of them with a little bit of his wealth. He gave the first five talents (an amount of gold), the second received two talents, and the last one was given one talent. When the wealthy man returned from his trip, he found that the first servant had invested the five talents and made five more, the second had invested the two talents and made two more, but the final servant had hidden away his talent so it would not be stolen or taken. The final servant returned to the master only what had been given to him. This angered the landowner who confiscated the talent, gave it to the first servant, and had the last one thrown out into the street.
Again, for those who want to live like Jesus, it would be wise to pay attention to the fact that all of His teachings focused on building His spiritual kingdom. Go back to the parable, but recognize that you and I are the servants. And rather than an amount of gold, God has entrusted each of us with various skills, abilities, and gifts (by the way, I should correct myself to note that for some of you, it might be that God has literally blessed you with financial wealth as your “gift”).
So what are you using those “talents” for? To make friends? To make peace? To be liked? To live comfortably? Or to save souls from Hell? Only one of those things will please the Master because only one of those things builds His spiritual kingdom and has eternal value.
The message of false tolerance has paralyzed the church today to the point where we regard it as a greater tool of evangelism than confrontation. That is as absurd as it is illogical. I’m wildly intolerant of my own sin. I hate it with everything I am.
A true Christian will never tolerate sin in their own lives. But if Jesus counsels us to love our neighbor as ourselves,[ii] it stands to reason that a true Christian will never tolerate sin in another human being. Discernment, tact, sensitivity in knowing how to approach our fellow sinners is one thing; but given that we know what their sin will do to them, we cannot sit idly by as it does.
Typically worldly atheists choose not to understand that perspective, and they join with foolish believers (those “good-cops” we mentioned last chapter) to heap scorn upon real Christians. But sometimes, in rare moments, there are those in the atheist community who get it. They realize that a confrontational Christian is a person acting out of love, not judgment. They also recognize that the “tolerant” Christian earning the world’s accolades is in fact a scoundrel and coward.
Penn Jillette is one such atheist, and he deserves to be heard on this issue. In a Big Think video entitled “Why Tolerance is Condescending,” Penn rips the hatred of these so-called “tolerant” Christians. Listen up “Good Cop” Christians. This is a masterful wake-up call for all of us:
“I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a Heaven and Hell, and people could be going to Hell, or not getting eternal life, or whatever, and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling ‘em this because it would make it socially awkward. How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?
How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was going to hit you and you didn’t believe it – if that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.”[iii]
You don’t hear me say this often, but Christians could really learn a lesson from this atheist. If we believe that sin exists, if we believe that Hell exists, if we believe that sin leads people to an eternity in Hell, if we believe that Jesus offers the only escape from that fate, then we won’t “tolerate” anyone’s sin.
Instead, we will risk everything: our fame, our fortune, our reputation, our popularity, our job, our family, our friendships… everything to expose sin to a world embracing it.
That is our unique nature that makes us strangers. It is our urgent mission that makes us Christians.
