Spending time with 'them'

And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. – Mark 2.16-17

‘Those people! How could Jesus spend time with them? He is a rabbi and a noted teacher and a prophet, but He is eating with those wretched publicans and sinner. How can He do that?’ He ought to be spending His time with the other religious people.’

I realise that I just wrote about this a few weeks ago, but I think it is something we need to be reminded of over and over again because sometimes we just don’t seem to get it.

I have known a lot of believers who have thought and taught that Christians should exclusively or mostly spend time with other believers. I myself have been questioned and cautioned about spending too much time with lost friends and doing things with them.

It is almost like they think that if we hang around lost people too much we might catch their sin.

But as Jesus points out here, the question is ‘how are we going to reach those who need salvation if we don’t spend time with them?’

Sure, we obviously don’t partake in the sinful lifestyle we encounter, but if we love people we recognise that we have a message they need to hear and we can’t expect them to come to us. We need to go where they are. That means we spend time with them where they are.

A friend once told me that sometimes we need to ‘get our hands dirty’ when we preach the gospel. We’ll be in good company – that’s just what Jesus did,