Jesus Eats With Sinners...And Will Judge Us After the Meal

Jesus ate with sinners. He walked with them, stayed in their homes, touched them and healed their diseases. Jesus eating with sinners is actually the best description of Him, though it was not made in praise, but in derision: "This Man receives sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15:2).
Jesus eating with sinners is what saves us - "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me" (Revelation 3:20).

Jesus did indeed eat with sinners, and still does.

Painting by David Iles (detail)

But, something we must remember about Jesus and us sinners is this - He will also judge us.

"Jesus ate with sinners!" has become almost as misused and misunderstood as "don't judge others" by those of us looking to sound vaguely Biblical when we're called out for doing wrong. When we lustily cry "Jesus ate with sinners!" to defend our unrepentant behavior, we willfully forget that He told the same sinners with whom He ate two thousand years ago that they would not escape the consequences of their rejection of Him:

"Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent: 'Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.'" (Matthew 11:20-24).

When Jesus ate with sinners, He was not doing it to be cool, nice, or friendly. Jesus was showing them He loved them so that they would repent. He was likely eating with His mouth full as He taught the people with whom He ate, about Scripture, His Father, about eternal life. Yet if we accept Jesus at our dinner table, yet don't repent and walk with Him after the meal is done, we say, "enjoy the rigatoni, but keep Your mouth shut about my sins, and get out as soon as You've gotten rid of my dirty dishes."

Talkin' Lowdown Amarillo, Texas Street Preacher Blues

There's a fella here in Amarillo, Texas whose days are filled with street preaching via megaphone, spewing the basic "everyone but me is going to hell" doctrine of those like Westboro Baptist Church and others cut from their blasphemous cloth. The man's basic message is that, even if you think you're a Christian, and think you're saved, you're actually not a Christian and are going to hell if you've sinned after accepting Christ.
People with this false doctrine build their argument, like any false doctrine, on Scripture misunderstood, twisted, or taken out of context; passages like 1 John 3:6-9, which says, "Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God." What the man with the megaphone doesn't realize is that this sin refers to the unrepentant, habitual sin of those with an empty proclamation of Jesus, who attempt to trample on grace, rather than live under it. This doesn't refer to true Christians - and what is a true Christian? A true Christian is not someone who suddenly becomes perfect, but someone who acknowledges that their sin is great, but abides in the truth that the love and grace of Jesus Christ is greater.
Also, Amarillo's megaphone preacher forgets the Holy Spirit's words through John just one chapter earlier: "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1).

Paul writes to us in the epistle to the Romans that sinning because you're saved, shrugging it off and saying "God will forgive me" is not right: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" (Romans 6:1-2)
So, what is the truth of the matter? Are we literally unable to stumble once saved, our DNA changed as well as our hearts? Does God put us in a moral straight-jacket that makes it impossible to err? Or, has the precious blood of our Savior Jesus also covered the sins and mistakes we make as Christians? To suggest that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is good for some of a believer's sins, but somehow becomes ineffective, powerless against those after his or her conversion, is to suggest something as powerful as the blood of our Lord is fickle and limited by a believer's time and circumstance.

In arguing against the belief that true Christians do not sin, I would point to two incidents in the life and ministry of Paul. In the second chapter of Galatians, we read of a dispute between Paul and fellow apostle Peter. Paul describes confronting Peter, and even Barnabas, on a matter of "hypocrisy." This event obviously took place after the resurrection of Jesus, and during the apostles' ministry. So, then, did Peter's stumbling render him unsaved? Not a true Christian? And if so, why would God, sovereign over His word to us, allow two of his epistles to be part of this book we came to call the Bible?

The other example from Paul comes from the second epistle to the Corinthians, where we read of Paul's instructions to the church at Corinth - a church that was often plagued with sin and erroneous ideas about Jesus - concerning a brother who had done wrong and strayed (2 Corinthians 2:5-11). Paul instructs the church there not to shun or ostracize the brother, but to comfort, love, and forgive him. This is just what the Holy Spirit does to each of us when we, like the straying brother at Corinth, wander from God's direction.

Like many people who shout things on the street, I suppose it might be ineffective to confront megaphone man with these truths; for his mind seems made up, and a wall built over his heart. And with such people, the Proverbs give us sound advice: "Go from the presence of a foolish man, when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge," and "Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, Yet his foolishness will not depart from him."
If you argue with a brick wall, who looks foolish? You, or the brick wall? The Proverbs also tell us, "He who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself, and he who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself. Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you; rebuke a wise man, and he will love you."

But - Jesus tells us "the things which are impossible with men are possible with God." And it is Jesus who took upon Himself the shame and hate of sin - and sinners - on the cross. Before we knew Him, we scoffed at Him, hated Him, scorned Him to shame. But His mercy and grace are unfathomable, as they should be, for they belong to a God who is often so impossible to comprehend, to grasp, to understand. This is why He came to us in the form of that lowly Servant, our ladder to heaven like the one dreamed by Jacob at Bethel.

I won't say this megaphone man gives preachers a bad name - that's impossible, for a true preacher of the word is under the name of Christ. We must pray he receives love from even those at whom he spews the venom of ignorance, and gentle rebuke, done only out love and a desire for him to see how mighty the works of Christ truly are.

Cpt. Bud's Devotionals, 10-25-15: "God's Will"

One of the "Christian terms" some believers use the most carelessly, without prayer or much discernment, is "God's will." Some even use it as a means to comfort others when someone else has done some horrible thing. "It was God's will" - as if God approves of us doing sinful and destructive things to hurt others and ourselves. When a woman discovers her husband to be unfaithful, there are some who would say, "It was God's will." No, it wasn't God's will that the woman's husband spit on their marriage.

I was doing some research on mass murderers for a YouTube video I recorded about the gun control debate. I read about James Oliver Huberty, who in 1984 killed twenty-one people at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California. When Huberty was a child, his mother claimed she had received a "calling" from God to leave her family and become a sort of street preacher. The abandonment by his mother devastated Huberty, and he spent his childhood - most of his entire life - sullen, angry, and in pain.
I've often said: in His grace, God often won't punish us for our sins - but we sure make each other pay for them.

God can call us to do some very seemingly crazy things. He called the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute, as a message to disobedient Israel, who had repeatedly turned away from God, who remained loyal.
God called another great prophet, Jeremiah, to wear a yoke around his neck as a sign to Judah, whose apostasy would lead to their destruction by the Babylonians, and who scoffed at the idea of wearing the "yoke" of Babylon for their own good, denying that Jerusalem could be taken by any foreign nation.
God called the apostles to proclaim the Gospel of His Son Jesus Christ in decadent Rome, telling them beforehand that they would be persecuted and killed for doing so.
God can, and will, call us to do some daunting, weird, and frightening things. But He will never call us to sin.

James Huberty's mother's calling to preach may have been from God, but it was not His will that she abandon her son, leaving him to become a bitter loner. God does not contradict Himself, and being perfect, He cannot - He is so pure and good that He is incapable of it. Though we often wait for God, who sometimes remains silent for a season, as we wonder what He wants us to do, what His will for us is, though we often go days or years without answers, we can be sure that He will never call us to do wrong, to do that which is of the devil, who only seeks to "steal, kill, and destroy."
We can be sure God's will includes abundant love and mercy, that His will calls us to show such things, love and mercy so alien to our natural, fleshly state. We can be sure God's will includes sacrifice, for the sake of spreading the Gospel, for the sake of blessing others. We can be sure God's will includes His goodness shining through us, so that we may be a light to the world.

So, while sometimes we feel "in the dark" about God's will, we can be sure it has no association with the works of darkness, and that His light casts every shadow from among those who believe and diligently seek Him.
OHMS,
Cpt. Bud Sturguess
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." -John 1:1-5