“Damned and beyond hope,” was how eighteenth-century hymn writer William Cowper described himself before he met Jesus. After three failed suicide attempts and a prolonged stay in an asylum, he had never felt so utterly lost.
One day, he found a Bible lying on a bench. He sat and read of Jesus’ love and compassion towards despairing individuals just like himself. “I saw so much benevolence, mercy, goodness and sympathy with miserable men, in our Saviour’s conduct, that I almost shed tears upon the revelation; little thinking that it was an exact type of the mercy which Jesus was on the point of extending towards myself.”
As he sat with Jesus on that bench, increasingly Cowper discovered the same love as the “tax collectors and sinners” had received when they ate and drank with him (Mark 2:15). This group were the outcasts, the unloved, the despairing—the “miserable” as Cowper put it. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners,” Jesus said, explaining His choice of companions to the Pharisees (v. 17). He had come like a “doctor” for those who knew they were “ill”.
If it seems like you are sitting at the “table of sinners” today, feeling miserable or hopeless in any way, be assured that this is the table where Jesus pulls up His own chair. It is to those who know they are lost that Jesus says, “Follow me” (v. 14).
By Chris Wale
REFLECT & PRAY
Sadly, Cowper still struggled at times with suicidal thoughts, even after becoming a Christian. How does Jesus’ description of Himself as our Doctor encourage you if you are struggling similarly? When could you pull up a chair with Jesus today?
Dear Jesus, thank You for pulling up Your chair to sit with me. Your compassion and grace never fail.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Tax collectors were despised and hated by the Jews because they were regarded as mercenaries and traitors who worked for the hated Roman conquerors who subjugated them. They also collected more than what was legally mandated, pocketing the excess and dishonestly enriching themselves at the expense of their own people (Luke 3:13–14). The term “sinners” was used to describe the notoriously wicked—reprobates who rejected God’s law. The Pharisees also used “sinners” to include anyone who didn’t meticulously maintain ceremonial purity or follow their rigid standards. Tax collectors were deliberately lumped together with sinners to show how degenerate and wicked the tax collectors were. Jesus was invited to dine with all sorts of people, even with the Pharisees ( Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1). But He ate so often with social and religious outcasts—considered the scum of society—that He earned the reputation of being “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).
K. T. Sim
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