Spirituality Column #739

January 12, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Call a Doctor! NOW

By Bob Walters

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus to the Pharisees at Matthew’s home, Mark 2:17

“…there is no one righteous, not one …” Romans 3:10-18, quoting Psalms 14 and 53

The Pharisees were utterly clueless.  They shouldn’t have been, but they were.

Jesus, in Mark 2, is having dinner at the home of Matthew who has decided to follow Jesus and presumably is saying goodbye to his “tax collector and sinner” friends.  If the gathering were as wretched as we are led to believe, I wonder what the Pharisees were doing anywhere near it.  But, they saw Jesus and his disciples there and passed judgment on the awfulness of the gathering … and said so. 

Jesus agreed.  Yes, he was eating with sinners; they were sick with the sins of the world and needed the only doctor who could heal any of them.  It is Jesus’s comment about “the righteous” – which the Pharisees would have rightly believed was referring to them – that is clever, clandestine, and utterly revealing.

I read a Ray Stedman devotional recently which explained Mark 2:17 this way, “Jesus indicated strongly that when people think they have no need of help from God, they are in no position to be helped.  There is nothing to say to them.  But our Lord always put his efforts where men and women were open to help, where they were hurting so much they knew they needed help.”  The Pharisees didn’t know.

“Not knowing” we need help is what happens when we confuse our human opinions, passions, and desire for power and control with God’s own actual truth, certitude, and righteousness.  Righteousness is about Him, not us, and Jesus is not complimenting the Pharisees but rebuking them in a frightening and final way.

Something else Stedman wrote recently stuck with me: "If you don't have Jesus in your heart when you live, there is nothing in you worth saving when you die." 

There is no one righteous, not one.  To live, we need a righteous doctor in the most desperate way. Which brings me to a brief commentary on recent public events.

I’d rather not face the obvious ordeal before us as a nation, but here we are.

No amount of responsibility-ducking, blame-shifting “God is in control” is going to reverse the desperate course of self-inflicted human events to come.  What I know is that God will not change.  What I hope for – in deep personal repentance and humility – is that God’s mercy rather than His wrath will be the next thing visited upon us.

My plan is to stick close to Jesus and hope for the best.  The doctor is always in.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that if you are really mad at something in this world, when you are as convinced as he is that the shades of nefarious darkness have been pulled down in corruption, injustice, and subterfuge tight against the light of truth, read Psalms 14 and 53.  That’ll stir you up, then read Psalm 4 to calm down. Then … call on Jesus for peace. No matter what happens, God’s got it and we’ll grow.  Whether we like it or not.