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Lent Devotional Day 10

Lent Devotional March 14, 2014Share

Mark 2:13-22

13 Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them.
14 As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.
15 And as he sat at dinner in Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples - for there were many who followed him.
16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
17 When Jesus heard this, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."
18 Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?"
19 Jesus said to them, "The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.
21 "No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.
22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins."

DEVOTIONAL
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners.”

This is one of those paradoxes that is easy to forget. Jesus came to call sinners. The image of healing is also helpful in this way. You have to admit you’re sick before you look to be healed.

When Jesus talks about sinners, we like to imagine them as people who are different from us, people who live, think, vote, choose, and act differently from us. But of course, when Jesus speaks of sinners, that category includes us as well. Lucky for us, Jesus came to call sinners.

Message provided by the Miller Summer Youth Institute.

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