[I’m reworking the intro to this article for the new site. Since the site isn’t officially up yet, please don’t hold this against me. 🙂 I’ll have it completed soon.]
An unhealthy trend spreads through modern reformed theology circles
Why did this happen? No one came to him. No one picked him up. Why was it so easy for everyone to leave him behind to fend for himself? Are we not to restore our brothers in a spirit of gentleness (Gal 6.1)? Are we not to do unto others as we’d have them do unto us (Matt 7.12)?
Why were they so afraid of damaging their reputations by association? What inside of them made them feel like they could not help a brother in need for fear of jeopardizing their own ministries? How backward does that sound when you say it out loud?
Who did Jesus hang out with? Was He concerned with what other people thought about His friends? What was He willing to risk with His reputation to get down to the sinners’ world view? Make no mistake about it, Jesus tarnished His reputation with the religious leaders of the time, but do you think Jesus cared? Let’s find out.
Looking to Jesus
It would take volumes to account for every interaction Jesus made with His followers. The personal connections He forged throughout His life represent a major theme of the gospels. For brevity’s sake, I want to look at just a few of these precious encounters with the purpose of discovering whether or not Jesus concerned Himself with the social standings of those to whom He ministered, sought, and called.
The Woman at the Well
You will find one of my favorite stories of Jesus in John 4.1-26 where He has an encounter with a Samaritan woman in Sychar at Jacob’s well. Because the complete account spans forty-five verses and almost a full chapter, I will not quote the passage in its entirety but I would, however, encourage you to take a look at it on your own.
Jesus had just left Judea and turned his journey north toward Galilee. In that time, common Jewish custom dictated that one go around Samaria when traveling from Judea to Galilee, but Jesus chose to go straight through it. He entered the region unashamedly without regard to public perception or personal defilement (Harris, The Stone and the Glory).
Most people in that day would have told you that Jesus made a grave mistake by traveling through Samaria. You see, the Samaritans were half-breeds whose ancestors had mixed their Jewish blood with the Assyrian invaders hundreds of years prior. The Jews looked at them with a hatred rivaling any form of racism you might see in our present culture. So to put it plainly, Jesus traveled through a land of outcasts.
Just a quick note about the setting: this well Jesus at which Jesus stopped (Jn 4.6) was not just any ordinary well. This is the well Jacob had given to Joseph all the way back in Genesis 48.22. This has massive historical significance but we must move on. As a professor of mine from school would say, “We’re skipping over gold mines.” Perhaps I’ll revisit it in a later article, or you can read Dr. Greg Harris’ book titled The Stone and the Glory for an in-depth look.
As Jesus rests by the well a woman from the nearby village approached. She came alone, as she likely did on most days, around noon time, assuming John used Jewish time for the “sixth hour” in John 4.6 (this is the widely held view). The interesting thing about her timing was that it was customary for women to fetch water either very early in the morning, or late in the evening. This woman, whom John chooses not to name, came in the middle of the day, by herself. Why?
As we find out in verses 16-18, she bore a dark past upon her shoulders. She had been married five times and currently lived with a sixth man who was not her husband. She had been passed from man to man throughout her entire life. She had likely been abandoned by everyone in her village and with each marriage the quality of the man no doubt diminished. Now she was living with a sixth man out of wedlock. But in her mind, what was the point? All of her marriages had failed. Was there any reason to go through the ritual once again just to have it fail as all her other arrangements? She was damaged goods. She was an outcast among a people of outcasts (Harris).
She walked to the well at a time when she knew she would be alone because she couldn’t bare the ridiculing eyes of her peers or the way people probably veered off the path to avoid being contaminated by her. But when she arrived at the well, she found Jesus and would never be alone again.
Jesus engaged this woman whom everyone else reviled. What do you suppose someone would have thought if they had seen Jesus talking to her, this whore to put it bluntly? Well, if I didn’t know him, I can tell you exactly what I would have thought: that he was soliciting sexual favors from a woman known to give them away. His own disciples marveled when they saw Him with her (Jn 4.27). They couldn’t believe it.
Jesus didn’t worry about how his association with the woman would affect his public standing. He could not have picked a more reputation-destroying person with whom to occupy Himself than this outcast of outcasts at the well. Yet He was keenly aware of her need, and for Jesus, public perception always took a backseat to the individual. This woman arrived at the well as a rejected harlot and left as God’s princess (Harris) because Jesus subverted social faux pas and touched the untouchable.
Much of this section on the woman at the well was paraphased from my friend Dr. Greg Harris’ book titled The Stone and the Glory. It’s hard to phrase this story better than he does in his book. I encourage you to take a look for yourself. I promise you it will be a blessing.
Zacchaeus was a Wee Little Man…
The story of Zacchaeus tops the charts when it comes to all-time great flannel board messages of elementary-grade Sunday School. We all know about the wee-little man who climbed up in the sycamore tree for Jesus he wanted to see (do I need to cite this?) (Luke 19.1-10).
Usually, people tell this story of Zacchaeus from the perspective of his persistence to get to Jesus, but what we often overlook is the risk Jesus takes with His own reputation to reach Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and just like today, people in biblical times hated paying taxes. But more than that, many of them, such as Zacchaeus, were Jews who had sold out to Rome. The taxes on the Jewish people constantly reminded them of their enslavement to the imposing empire, often leaving them feeling as if God had forsaken them. It wore on them every day like a hot August sun, and the tax collectors were easy to blame. Therefore, they excluded the tax collectors from all religious fellowship and did not allow them in the Temple and synagogues. Most considered their money tainted, and anyone who accepted it would be defiled by it (Bible-History.com). Hate may be too strong of a word (though probably not for some), but one could say people had a severe distaste for them. Anyone caught fraternizing with a tax collector would be judged and looked down upon as if they collected taxes for Rome themselves.
So keeping that in mind, this is the type of man, amidst an enormous crowd, that Jesus called down from the tree to join Him for a meal. How do you think the religiously pious and self-righteous felt about this? In Luke 19.7 the Bible says, “And when they [the crowd] saw it, they all grumbled, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.'” In our present day, Jesus wouldn’t receive any Facebook likes for this action. No re-tweets. And for our Reddit readers, He likely would have massacred his link karma with a slew of down votes.
This was a big deal. After this action by Jesus, some people would have turned away and never followed Him again. They would have been so perturbed by His decision to consort with such a “defiled” person that they would have no longer respected the truth of His teachings.
Jesus may have given up hundreds of followers that day to reach one man in need. How many of us would do the same? And sadly, how many of us pass over those in need every day because of their “sinful” reputation in order to keep our own noses clean?
Jesus Calls Levi (Matthew), the Tax Collector
Zacchaeus wasn’t the only tax collector Jesus called. Earlier in His ministry, Jesus called Levi (who would later be known as Matthew, author of the Gospel bearing his name) right out of his tax booth on the beach where he extorted merchants and traders for a living (Mk 2.14).
Levi immediately dropped his work and followed Jesus, probably ecstatic that another Jew desired to fellowship with him. They moved from the beach to Levi’s house where Jesus dined with a crowd of tax collectors and sinners (Mk 2.15).
Can’t you just picture this in your mind? Jesus, the Son of God, whom all the deity of God dwelt within (Col 1.19), was “chilling” with a bunch of social misfits and sinners. Nobody liked these people, and it didn’t go unnoticed. Look at the reaction of the scribes and Pharisees in Mark 2.16:
And the scribes and the Pharisees, when they saw that He was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to His disciples, “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Why did Jesus again risk His reputation to interact with these people? The Pharisees asked the disciples the question, but Jesus answers them with an acclaimed and revealing response, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2.17, ESV).
Just like us, Jesus had a limited amount of time on earth to minister. The clock continually ticks. Jesus blatantly established in this verse that He would not waste His time with those who are well. After all, what could he possibly do for someone who had it all figured out? (Both Jesus’ and my own sarcasm should be noted.)
In Luke 15 (which I don’t have the space to explore here) the Pharisees grumbled again at the time Jesus spent with sinners and tax collectors (Lk 15.2). Jesus responded with three wonderful parables depicting the joy God experiences over the return and restoration of those lost to Him.
Jesus’s reputation clearly paid a price for the people He chose to pursue, but this never once stopped Him. We never see a passage that states, “Jesus wanted to help the woman but he was afraid of what the Pharisees and the crowds would think of him.” That doesn’t sound like Jesus at all.
Narrowing the Scope
The scope of this series deals with how we treat, minister to, and engage fallen leaders within the church. I’m convinced there are two primary reasons we leave these fallen leaders behind.
First, I think we tend to get this “deer in the headlights” reaction when a leader falls because of the awkwardness of the situation. Nobody really knows what to do when it happens. It’s almost always unexpected because after all, if we expected they could fall into sin of such a public nature, they would not have been leaders to begin with. I’m not going to deal with this aspect of the problem in this post but I promise we’ll get to it eventually in this series. I’m going to spend an entire article laying out how we should respond in these situations.
The second reason we pass by fallen leaders hurts a little more than the first one because it exposes a deep dilemma within ourselves. This reason is rooted in our pride and self-righteousness. We pass by fallen leaders out of fear for what they’ll do to our own ministries and reputations if we are caught blending with them. As sad as it sounds, I’m not making this up. I know just from my experience with the man I mentioned in the introduction that this was the primary reason most people abandoned him, and they were quite eager to vocalize this as their motive. I could sense a lot of pride in their decision–like they should be awarded for having the forethought to “protect” their ministries. If only this were an isolated incident.
Since that time I’ve met dozens of other fallen leaders and church members who had similar experiences. Other believers, those in leadership especially, treated them like lepers, as if they were unclean with the capacity to defile those around them.
Have we become so “above reproach” (yeah, that hurts doesn’t it?) that our ministries no longer look like that of Jesus’? How in the world can we look at the way Jesus embraced the fallen and the broken and then feel like it’s okay for us to show such disdain for them? We would rather sit in our cushy little theological circles and brass each others’ halos than reach out to someone who needs a physician. We only want to interact with the healthy because that makes us comfortable.
The Good Samaritan
There could not be a more clear example of this than in the parable of the Good Samaritan. A lawyer, looking to prove himself righteous through the Law, questioned Jesus about what it means to love his neighbor–more specifically, who exactly was his neighbor (Lk 10.29).
Jesus tells the lawyer a story of a man who encounters a gang of robbers along the way between Jerusalem and Jericho. The robbers strip the man of everything he owns and beat him bloody, leaving him on the side of the road (Lk 10.30).
Two men, a priest and Levite, come across the man lying near death on the side of the road. Not only did they ignore him, they swerved around him. The Bible says they “passed by on the other side of the road” (Lk 10.31-32). They saw the man and went out of their way to avoid him.
Why wouldn’t they stop? It’s tough to say for sure since the story is probably theoretical (though it’s quite possible Jesus is referencing a well-known story to the region). Maybe they were too busy to stop and take time out of their schedules. Maybe they were afraid the man had some sort of disease and could infect them if they went close. Maybe they thought the robbers still lurked near the path, perhaps using the beaten man as bait for more loot. Whatever the reason, they thought themselves “to important” to stop. They cared more about their own well-being than they did that of the man, which goes directly against “loving your neighbor as yourself,” the very commandment the lawyer had just referenced a few verses before.
Most of us know how the story plays out. A Samaritan man passes by and gives the beaten man medical attention and takes him to an inn where he can recover. Jesus tells the lawyer that this man showed love for his neighbor through his act of mercy (Lk 10.36-37).
How many of us act like the priest or the Levite when we pass a brother who has been spiritually beaten and left along the road? After all, we’re all on the same road right? Are we not running the same race (1Co 9.24, 2Ti 4.7, Heb 12.1)? How many times have you encountered a fallen brother along the road? What did you do? Were you too busy with your own schedule and agenda? Were you afraid of what helping him or her would do to your own reputation? Were you “too good” to stoop to that level?
The Pharisee and the Tax Collector
Speaking of being “too good,” let’s look at where we are headed if we don’t figure out how to show mercy to those who fall beside us. Luke 18.9-14 shows us the “too good” mindset in its most extreme form. Let’s check out the parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector praying together in the temple.
I think it’s interesting that he told this parable to a group of people “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Lk 18.9). Isn’t that exactly what we do when we think our own ministries are too important to help another? The second we think someone else’s sins are worse than our own, we have trusted in ourselves for righteousness. In other words, to think we are somehow better in the eyes of God than someone else means we put faith in our own works rather than the equally saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Look at what the Pharisee prays:
God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners [like the tax collector kneeling right beside him], unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get (Lk 18.11-12).
I hope I have made the point in this article that God hears the above prayer from us when we pass over a fallen brother or someone we think ourselves too above reproach to help. We must escape the mindset of scoring particular sins and follies from better to worse. Lost is lost, and saved is saved. Only pride and arrogance go beyond this.
Read for yourself what a prayer sounds like when it comes from someone who comprehends where they stand before God:
God, be merciful to me, a sinner! (Lk 18.13)
And even more important to the purpose of this study, we look at Jesus’ warning in verse 14, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled…” This warning should make us shake in our boots. If we treat others with contempt, we can be sure our day of humbling is coming, and if we’re lucky, it will come in this lifetime, but for many it will not. Thousands of men and women will stand before the throne of God one day and realize how arrogantly and pretentiously they treated their brothers and sisters in Christ, but by that time, it will be too late. They will be humbled before the Lord as their works they “protected” their entire lives will not stand the test of fire (1Co 3.13).
Are you starting to see why this is such a big deal? Reaching out to fallen leaders is so important–they cannot be left behind, and we certainly can’t consider ourselves too good to help. Jesus never concerned Himself with public perception. He went where people needed Him, and He met them on their level, not His. Stop protecting yourselves from sinners. Get your hands dirty and help.
