notorious

Mark 2

13 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him.

14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector's booth.

"Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him.

So Levi got up and followed him.


15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests,

        along with many tax collectors and other notorious sinners.

(There were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers.)


16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples,

        "Why does he eat with such scum?"


17 When Jesus heard this, he told them,

        "Healthy people don't need a doctor—sick people do.

          I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners."



In a culture & world that was even more "anything goes" than today (but not by much! LOL), I've often wondered in the world a person had to be & do to be called a "notorious" sinner!


If anyone has read this blog for any length of time then you know what I think about this passage.

It points out the obvious.

Once we become Christ followers, it seems are so much more interested in insulating ourselves from those who are not Christ followers.

Sometimes it's because we worry about what our new Christian friends will think.

Sometimes we think we're better than "those people" once we become Christ followers & shouldn't hang with them.

Some are afraid these non-believer friends will somehow suck them back into that old life.


It doesn't matter why some of us no longer have an "non-Christian" friends.

It only matters we don't.


I've always thought it is VERY interesting that mark offers this aside to the story...

"There were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers."

iow, there was something very compelling as well as loving about Jesus that these "notorious sinners" WANTED to be around Jesus.

And seemingly, there were a lot of them.


So, what can we glean from this?


We should love & care for those notorious sinners all around us everywhere every day in such a compelling way that they will WANT to be around us.


And where would any of us who follow Jesus be if the people who influenced & led us to believe & follow Him had not wanted to hang around non-believers?

Hmmmm...