The Lutheran Hour
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"Why Does God Waste Time with Sinners?"
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Text: Matthew 9:9-13
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Why does God waste His time on sinners? If God were smart wouldn’t it make better sense for Him to concentrate His efforts on those from whom He might get more results? That is basically the question the pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples in today’s text. The tax collectors and other “sinners” are beneath contempt and below God’s notice. Jesus should raise His sights to those whose lives are better. There God will get more glory. There will be a greater witness to the God of Israel, the God who has chosen and set apart His people. But the reply of Jesus tells us exactly what’s on the mind and in the heart of God.
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” While God is calling a people to Himself, it is not in calling the righteous, but sinners, that the purpose of repentance is evident.
God’s call is always a call to repentance. God’s people of Israel misunderstood the purpose of God’s call and choice. He had indeed called the people of Israel to be His own out of all the peoples on the earth. But it was not because they were the best or for that matter even good. It was not because they were the most powerful or a strong and unified people. It was not because they were faithful to Him or even willing to be faithful. It was because God wanted to show mercy to mankind. To make sure the human race would understand the idea of God having mercy on them, He chose one people as an example. He chose a people who were typical of the human race. They were petty, jealous, selfish, impatient, weak, and proud, overestimating their importance and underestimating God’s mercy.
In the lesson from Hosea for today we see how this works. God has just said He will allow the enemies of His people to come and afflict them. He will do this because His people have abandoned Him and gone to the worship of other gods. Those other gods, by the way, are all gods who were created in the image of man and man’s desires. Because His people have gone after those gods, they have abandoned their only hope–God Himself. God wants them back, not because He is missing something if they are gone, or because He is proved ineffective if they are not His people worshiping only Him. But because without Him, they are lost. They have not only lost their purpose in this world, becoming like every other people, but they would also lose their eternal life. God’s only interest is for their welfare. Therefore God wants repentance. So the people do the logical thing: they repent. Give God what He wants so God will give us what we want. We want to be out from under this oppression, so let’s repent so God will take away the enemy and we can be back the way we were. We have forgotten to make the sacrifices on time and in the right way! So let’s do that. It’s an easy fix. After all, isn’t this what God wants?
God replies to His people, “What am I going to do with you?” This is not repentance! I am not interested in just words or some sacrifice on the altar. Sound familiar, parents? Repentance that wants a return to the status quo, to the way things were before, so we can go on being what we were and not worry about the consequences, is not repentance. It may have the right words in the right order, and the sacrifice may be burning on the altar, but the heart is not right. It may look like repentance on the surface, but it is only on the surface. It is a shallow repentance. And shallow repentance presupposes that forgiveness is easy. The people of Israel had overestimated their importance and underestimated God’s mercy. They were, after all, the descendants of Abraham, the man God had chosen to be the ancestor of His people. Abraham obeyed God and was righteous, right? They were children of the promise God had made. God needed them to complete His promise, right?
The same thing is going on with the pharisees in the incident of the call of Matthew from being a tax collector, and therefore a notorious sinner, to being a disciple. The pharisees could not understand. God needs people like them, not like this tax collector. Jesus, as a rabbi and teacher of righteousness, should understand this. But instead he eats with and receives sinners. There in the house of the tax collector, Matthew, he has close fellowship with those very sinners who rejected God and whom God obviously should reject. Shouldn’t these sinners be required to bring forth obedience and holiness in their lives before Jesus would have this kind of close fellowship with them? Where is their sacrifice? Jesus’ own righteousness and His position as a rabbi who would speak for God was coming into question. As a teacher of righteousness, would it not make more sense to spend time with those not needing repentance and were well along the path of holy obedience? They had overestimated their importance and underestimated God’s mercy.
Human beings haven’t changed any since the time of Israel and the time of the pharisees. They are petty, jealous, selfish, impatient, weak, and proud, overestimating their importance and underestimating God’s mercy. Similar to the ancient people of Israel and the pharisees, we like the way things are. We like the nature of our relationship with God where we give God the little bit He desires from us (making the right sacrifices at the right time) so we can get what we want from Him. We like our lives to go along as they have been without bumps and potholes. We don’t want to really have to examine our lives deeply. We like to feel we are doing God a favor by providing the opportunity for Him to keep His promises through us. After all, He needs us for that, doesn’t He? When we concentrate on our obedience, and find some success, shouldn’t that be credited in God’s eyes?
When we have done something God needs to call us on, we prefer shallow repentance. Shallow repentance, as in the case of Israel and the pharisees, calls on us for easy remedy through some action of ours, no matter whether it’s challenging or not. Shallow repentance leaves room for excuse. We did what we did, but there was good reason for it. It was a moment of weakness and won’t happen again. (There, I fixed it.) I don’t know what got into me. (Therefore, I am not actually responsible.) I am truly sorry. (That should be enough). If that is what I did, if I have offended You, forgive me. (That should smooth things over.) Now we can get back to the way things were, pick up from there as if nothing had happened.
Jesus characterizes that kind of repentance as no repentance at all. “Those who are not sick don’t need the physician.” As long as you believe shallow repentance is sufficient, you don’t really believe repentance is actually necessary. By its very nature, repentance acknowledges that the only hope is cure and rescue for the disease of disobedience and sin. It reaches so far under the skin and into the nature that it cannot be eradicated by excuse, denial, by easy application, or even by a concentrated application of personal obedience. Sin cannot even be cured by a deep desire to change the sinfulness of one’s life. It can only be cured by forgiveness. Only the rescue of forgiveness goes deep enough into the sinful nature to deal sin its death blow and provide freedom. This is something which happens not because of the will and desire of man. For our desire is only for the shallow, the self-directed sacrifice, and reinstatement of the ease of our way of life. It happens because of the mercy of God. And God carries out His mercy through Jesus who says He has come to call sinners. Only those who come to know that within them there is no spiritual health, receive that gracious healing from God.
True repentance is the daily life of the child of God. For the child of God knows that sin afflicts him daily. The child of God feels the weight of that sin and death on himself more and more as he comes to understand what God truly wants from His people. God commands obedience to Himself and complete faith in Him for each human being without excuse or exception. He does this not because it shows us a way to live up to God’s expectations. He does this not because He needs it as the example of how His people are supposed to be in this world. He commands this obedience so we will be well aware that we cannot begin to obey such commands of perfection. It is not within us to do so, and try as we might, we fail. We sin. To trust in ourselves, is to think like the people of Israel in Hosea, or the pharisees in Matthew. They thought it was the shallow repentance of their sacrifice, their obedience that God regarded as righteous. That is why the people of Israel could look down on the nations and the pharisees could look down on the tax collectors and sinners. Their disobedience was evident. The pharisees’ obedience was evident, or so they thought.
True repentance knows that nothing of the old life, or the status quo, or the way things were, is worth hanging onto when God wants to have mercy. True repentance includes trust in the Word which God speaks in mercy to the world through His Son. It is that word of forgiveness, spoken to an undeserving sinner, because Jesus has taken that sinner’s sin and suffered punishment. It is because God is cross-eyed that He is merciful. He sees sinners to the depth of their sinfulness at the cross, for there the sinless One, Jesus, the Son of God, bears all sin, for each and all sinners. And the disastrous effect of that sin is the death of the One whose obedience was perfect and complete, whose sacrifice was perfect and complete, and therefore, whose forgiveness is perfect and complete.
Forgiveness is not a partial thing, for sin is not a partial thing. True repentance trusts that Word of God’s full forgiveness. True repentance is full of sorrow over sin but rejoices as God exposes sin and its sickness to apply His healing and forgiveness. True repentance rejoices that Jesus came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance. Since there is no one righteous, according to the Word of God, the merciful call of God to sinners is for all mankind. Come and receive. It is even a call to those who think they are not in need of that healing of forgiveness. It is a call to see and know the mercy of God.
That is why God “wastes” His time and effort on sinners. That’s all there is. God knows what sinners need. It is daily forgiveness and strengthening in faith. For daily we sinners are sorely tempted to go back to the status quo of our sinful lives. It is what we are used to, and it appeals to the pride and selfishness, weakness, and self-importance of our sinful nature.
It is like a man whose wife tells him often there are problems in their relationship because he is not acting like her God-given head, by not paying attention to her needs and supporting her in their life together. He thinks the cure is easy. Listen once in a while, grunt and nod as if he understands. When he gives her a little bit of what she wants, things can go back to normal and he can be what he was before. It doesn’t work, of course. Eventually she stops telling him about the problems with their relationship. He figures since she has stopped telling him, things must be OK.
God “wastes” His time and effort on sinners because we are always tempted to believe the sickness of sin is curable by us through a little effort. It is not impossible that some of the great “sinners” Jesus ate with that day at Matthew’s house became pharisees themselves. It is such a great tendency for us as sinful human beings to think that once we have been restored and forgiven by God’s mercy, we go on in perfection on our own–or that once God has forgiven us, we cannot sin again–or that once God has chosen, we cannot reject His mercy and despise His grace to our condemnation. God “wastes” His time with us because He is merciful. It is His nature. And the result God is looking for in the world is not good people, or greater obedience, or louder praises, or bigger sacrifices in our lives. God is looking for what He did in Abraham. God brought about faith in Abraham. Abraham believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness. Before there was obedience, there was God’s mercy. Before there was righteousness, there was God’s gift of faith. Trust that God is merciful and He would call an idol worshiper to be His own, and He would forgive the past of unbelief. The promise God made to Abraham brought its result as God wanted. His time was not wasted. The call to Matthew brought its desired result, and Jesus’ time with him and the other sinners was not wasted. There was faith.
We need God’s daily activity to us and in us so we recognize our sin and God’s overwhelming mercy. Daily God’s Word reminds us we have fallen, too, and that the real possibility of removing ourselves from God’s mercy exists. He has called us through His Word to be His children. He has declared that to us in His love from the cross. All that stands in the way of our being His, He has removed. Even the faith He requires is His gift to us by His Spirit. To make sure we don’t miss this fact, God brings Himself among us. He did that in the person of Jesus, His son. A true human being, Jesus was among us as one of us. Not as One who sinned or became a sinner. But as a sinless One who bore the effects and punishment and guilt of our sin in our place. He knows what it is to be tempted to give in to the worthless way of life that trumpets its worldly worth so loudly in our ears. And because He knows, His mercy is applied to us in such a loving way as to restore, cure, and rescue us from sin and death.
God has given us His mercy in our baptism. There the cross of Christ and all that it has accomplished is washed onto us as God declares. This is so we are not led into doubt of the mercy of God when we come face to face with the depth of our sin. That awareness of sin and its power over us continually might make us feel we are beyond hope, help and cure. But our baptism is what God does to us from the outside so we might not doubt the effectiveness of His promise and mercy. Know that God’s favor does not depend on our obedience or our sacrifice, or even our repentance, which is always too shallow, but on His cross and faithfulness.
God has given us His mercy in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. “For He was delivered over to death for our sins and was delivered and raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). Christ given unto death for forgiveness and raised from the dead is given to us in the Lord’s Supper, together with the bread and wine. This is not a symbolic action, either, just as Christ’s death did not just symbolize our forgiveness and healing but actually brought it. So He is brought to us in this supper. It is His Word that promises He is there and this is His gift. This is His Medicine of salvation and forgiveness. This is His mercy, not mine. He acts according to His will and promise, not mine. This is altogether His doing and not mine. His promise to be here and spend time with sinners and outcasts in the intimate fellowship is not mine to question, but to earnestly desire that He keep this promise, that He may fellowship with me and all sinners gathered in need of His mercy.
Why does God waste His time on sinners? That is all there is, and His mercy is our only hope. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for June 9, 2002
ANNOUNCER: Talking with us again about the need for pastors is the Rev. Jeff Moore, director of recruitment for Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. I’m Mark Eischer. Pastor Moore, what would you say the qualifications are for someone to consider the pastoral ministry?
MOORE: Well, first of all, we take a look at what the Scriptures themselves say: “A man of good reputation, husband of one wife, not addicted to strong drink, not a brawler, able to manage his own household well.” We’re looking for that kind of man, first and foremost. When I’m talking with someone about coming to the seminary, there are two things I’m really looking for that I think mark a man as the kind of man that would do well as a pastor. One is that he has to want to know God, through His Word. He’s got to have a strong enough desire to study God’s Word to get through Greek and Hebrew, and he must want to know God for himself. In knowing God better and better, he’s excited to share that with other people. The second quality I think that has to be inside of the man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, of course, is a desire to help people. If you’re a pastor, that’s your job–to help people learn about God, to share it with people–to help people in all the different things that happen in their lives. So, if he likes to study the Bible, but really doesn’t like people, then we don’t really want him at the seminary because he’s not going to have any fun there. He’s not going to do well in his studies and if he gets out, he’s just not going to enjoy being a pastor. A shepherd has to like sheep. So those are the attributes we look for.
ANNOUNCER: What kind of reasons would not perhaps be the best reasons to go into the ministry?
MOORE: A man who says, “Well, you know, I haven’t done well at anything else…” He’s probably not going to do too well at the seminary, either. If someone wants to come to the seminary to become a pastor so he can get up in front and tell everybody what to do and they can’t talk back, that’s not a good reason to come to the seminary. We’re not going to let him in if we know that’s what’s going on. Sometimes there are men who have had enough people say to them, “You should be a pastor.” They feel that maybe God’s trying to talk to them from the outside, and maybe it boils down to they’re doing it for someone else. The man personally doesn’t feel he should be a pastor. They’re not going to do well at the seminary.
ANNOUNCER: Do you take into consideration the family of the potential candidate as you’re working in this recruitment area?
MOORE: Absolutely. Although the family is not “called,” such as the man’s wife. Nevertheless, she is his wife. Let’s call this man David. She is David’s family. Whatever job David is serving in, it’s very important for her to feel comfortable if David is a pastor. Now, many of the wives, before they come to the seminary, are very concerned about, “I don’t think I’m a pastor’s wife. I don’t look like my pastor’s wife or the pastor’s wife as I was growing up.” I think that atttitude is fading; the stereotype of the pastor’s wife and people are beginning to realize the pastor’s wife is just herself. There are some expectations out there and she knows it. We shouldn’t pretend there aren’t. As all of this develops, we try to make sure she is just able to be herself; a wife to her husband. We try to make sure he pays attention to the fact that he’s supposed to be a husband to his wife, as well.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you. We’ve been talking with the Rev. Jeff Moore, director of recruitment for Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. The next Lutheran Hour message is titled, “I Have Called You by Name.”