At Least I’m Not a Tax Collector
Apparently tax collectors, back in the day, were pretty unscrupulous characters, who had no qualms with taking a nice chunk of pie for themselves as they collected for the government. In the Bible they’re even relegated to their own category of wickedness when the religious elite, the Pharisees, criticized Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners.
The really cool thing is, Jesus never shied away from tax collectors. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he told his disciples (Mark 12:17), and on at least two occasions he invited himself to dine with a tax collector, in their home, with all their friends (Matthew 9:10, Luke 19:5-7). He even told a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector who had both gone to the temple to pray (Luke 18:9-14). As the Pharisee prayed, he thanked God he wasn’t an evil doer like the tax collector across the room, and that he was soooo good…if only others were so very good like him. Meanwhile the tax collector came humbled and broken before God, and God had mercy on him.
It’s such an incredibly relevant story to us even today. Although God sees all sin as a darkness that separates us from Him, we humans tend to categorize sin. In our minds, we just can’t be as wicked as a man that beat his wife last night, or the woman that embezzled thousands of dollars from her employer, while we dismiss a slew of other infractions that may not have gotten us arrested, but possibly marked another human in ways we may never comprehend. Although anyone can find themselves stepping into those self-righteous shoes once in a while, people who claim to know Jesus should understand we have a calling to bring people to Him; broken, sinful and desperately in need of healing. The healing and restoration is His job, we are just called to bring them. No where in the New Testament does it teach people are to reform their ways before coming to Jesus, nor should we expect non-Christians to behave like Christians. When Jesus called Matthew to follow him (Matthew 9:9-13, as depicted in the picture above), there were no prerequisites, no qualifications to be met and no pre-following instructions. Jesus just said, “follow me” and Matthew followed. We, as Christians, live differently because the Holy Spirit resides in us, not because we are so good, like the Pharisee puffing himself up before God. That’s what grace means, we didn’t deserve deliverance but He gave it to us anyhow.
Sin is rampant within our culture, but we as Christians are called to be light in a dark world, and to demonstrate God’s grace toward all people, including the tax collectors; the homosexuals and transgenders, the pedophile and the abortionists, and even the racist. If we are taking a stand against sin, we must take a stand against all of it, not just the sins that seem bigger than our own. The sin is really just a symptom of a much bigger issue that needs to be addressed, not by us, but by God. He gave us big hearts so we can love lots of people…including those ostracized and despised, the tax collectors of our world, so that they might discover his abundant grace.
