Have you come across this?

I’ll leave specific names out of this, but a friend at church asked me to look into the church that his daughter and son-in-law have been attending and give him my thoughts. There’s a lot that I could respond to, but there was one thing that jumped out at me right way when I went to the church’s website. And since it reflects an idea that a lot of modern churches and Christians hold or teach, I thought it was worth a response.

Right at the top of their home page they affirm that theirs is “a church centered around Jesus and is committed to His way of love, inclusion and belonging.” Being centered around Jesus is great — that’s pretty much essential for any kind of church that claims to be Christian.

But there’s something else in that statement that shows they don’t really know that much — or choose to ignore — about the Christ they claim to be centered around.

In particular, his “way of inclusion” is not at all what they claim it is. A little further down the page, in their “About Us” statement, they refer to “the radical welcome and inclusivity of Jesus”. I suspect they want us to simply accept that that is a thing that is exactly what they think it is. But do they think it is?

I imagine they’re focusing on how his enemies criticized Jesus because he “welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2; see also Matthew 9:11, Luke 5:30, Mark 2:1-6; Matthew 11:19). They have in mind his invitation, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Perhaps they’re also thinking of how he presented himself as the Good Shepherd searching out and caring tenderly for his sheep, or even as a hen gathering her chicks under her wings. These are all good and real things — Jesus is full of love and grace, and he welcomes sinners into his presence. He even ate with Pharisees.

But that’s only part of the picture. And if you leave out the rest of it, you even get that part wrong.

Because while Jesus definitely issued a “Come as you are” invitation to sinners, “Remain as you are” was never a part of it. He didn’t eat and drink with “tax collectors and sinners” to tell them he accepted—let alone approved of, endorsed, or encouraged—their sins. He did it to tell them there was forgiveness for their sins, from a loving and merciful God, when they repented of those sins and trusted in his grace. (This was a message found in the Hebrew Scriptures, but which they did not hear from the religious leaders of their time.) This was the same message he preached to every “kind” of sinner.

The context of “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened” is also important. In the verses immediately before that Jesus pronounces judgment on entire towns full of sinners. Why? It wasn’t because they were unwelcoming or failed to be inclusive. It was because they refused to repent of their sins (Matthew 11:20-24). And the rest of Christ’s invitation also makes clear that it’s not a “remain as you are” acceptance but an entirely new way of life: he tells those exhausted by trying to be good on their own to take his “yoke” upon them and learn from him—and then they will have rest for their souls.

The same is true of the sheep in the Good Shepherd’s flock. To be a member of that well-fed, secure, and joyful group means listening to his voice and following his lead. Going your own way and doing your own thing makes you not a unique and gloriously independent individual but a lost sheep who needs to be saved. There’s love and safety in the flock, but only when you actually let the Good Shepherd lead you.

And that whole thing about Jesus wanting to gather people together, “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Matthew 22:37, Luke 13:34)? His point—and his lament—was that as much as he wanted to welcome the children of Jerusalem into his warm embrace, he would not, because they “were not willing”. Those whose wills are not aligned with his—who refuse to repent of their wrong beliefs, unholy ideas, and sinful actions, who refuse to listen to his Word and all it says, who refuse to take seriously what he teaches—are not included in his family. By their own choice.

There are some other accounts in the Gospels that are worth addressing in this regard. The story of the woman caught in adultery can be made to sound, with selective quotation, as though Jesus is indifferent to what she was doing— “Neither do I condemn you.” But while he is unwilling to command her stoning, he is clear about how to characterize her activity— “from now on do not sin anymore” (John 8:11).

In a similar way, Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well can be taught in such a way as to emphasize his comfort in conversing with her—someone whom society would label as immoral and unworthy of his attention. But his willingness to talk with sinners—how else is he going to reach them? —is hardly the same thing as accepting their sin. Jesus was, in fact, quite direct in calling out her continuing failure to live according to God’s standards: “In fact, you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband” (John 4:18).

Perhaps another reason Christ is imagined to have been unconcerned about anyone’s sin would be that the Gospels frequently show him in opposition to the Pharisees and the religious elite. One might “reason” in this way: Since in today’s culture it is judgmental religious people who are unwelcoming to those who make choices and live lives at odds with previous moral standards, and since the Pharisees were quick to judge and reject similar kinds of outsiders, then Jesus must be opposed to the religious people today who talk about the sins of the nonconforming and must be on the side of the moral rebels.

But the Gospels don’t support that kind of conclusion. Jesus didn’t oppose the Pharisees and the others because they cared about sin and God’s law or were unwelcoming. Nor was it because they took the Scriptures seriously. He condemned them because they were self-serving hypocrites who taught false doctrine and who not only oppressed the people they were supposed to shepherd but also rejected and fought against the gospel—the one thing every person needs to be saved from his or her sins. They led people away from God and his grace, and that could not be ignored. Even though they considered themselves the holiest of the holy, they weren’t, so Christ called them to repent. 

There’s one more thing that the advocates of a “come and remain just as you are” Messiah might point to: Jesus never specifically condemns certain behaviors, attitudes, and lifestyles as sins. They argue, then, that since he didn’t condemn them, he must be OK with them—or even approve of them. 

That argument fails the test of logic—no one today would accept a claim that they are for something just because they’ve never formally said they were against that thing. It also fails to recognize that 

• Jesus said quite a lot that never got recorded in the Gospels and an argument from silence isn’t compelling (“absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”), 
• there wasn’t much need to be specific about things that the people he worked among already knew and understood to be sinful, and 
• he affirmed all the statements of God’s moral law in the Old Testament as still valid for New Testament believers— “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17) and just about every time he referred to what “is written” as having God’s continuing authority and relevance. 

So the things identified in the Old Testament as contrary to God’s will and as acts of rebellion against the Almighty were still contrary, rebellious, and subject to judgment in Christ’s day and remain so in ours.

One of the main reasons why Jesus in the Gospels is often perceived as being particularly welcoming to “tax collectors and sinners” has to do with the fact that those people generally understood that they were living contrary to the Lord’s will. He didn’t need to be harsh in preaching the law to them because they already knew and felt its judgment.

And the people then (just as today) who were convinced everything they did was OK (or at least not so bad that God would be unhappy with them) and that it was other people who deserved judgment? They were the ones who received his sharpest or most shocking calls to repentance. In one instance he used some recent events to drive this point home: 

¹At that time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ²He answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? ³I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all perish too. ⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse sinners than all the people living in Jerusalem? ⁵I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you will all perish too.” (Luke 13:1–5)

That message was often not very welcome, but it was always necessary. Without repentance, even the nicest and sweetest of sinners—even the most abused or oppressed—will perish.

So, talking about Jesus’ “welcome and inclusivity” while overlooking everything he says in the Gospels about the necessity and importance of repentance is something like hyping the benefits of a twelve-step sobriety program to a substance abuser without mentioning that one must first admit he or she has a problem — and that, oh yeah, there are twelve steps that are integral to the program. Jesus could hardly have said it more clearly, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). He also told us what is celebrated in heaven: “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10).  And note what he included in his description of his Church’s mission: “repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47).

Perhaps, though, the problem isn’t that repentance is being overlooked so much as it is not understood. To repent is not to generally or generically say, “I’m a flawed person”, “I have troubles”, or “I feel lost”. To repent is to confess, “I am a sinner, entirely unworthy of God’s reward and deserving of damnation; everything about me is stained with sin, but I am guilty of these particular sins. I want not only to escape punishment for my sins against God in the next life, but to be free from them in this life — to stop committing them and turn away from them for good.” This kind of repentance, joined with faith in Christ and the forgiveness he won us all at the cross, is what brings joy to the angels. It is anything but “remain as you are” acceptance and inclusion.

So what we find in the Gospels, and in all of Scripture, is division. It’s not between sinners who need to repent and saints who don’t, nor is it between those who choose to love unconditionally and those who pass judgment. Instead, it’s between those who heed the call to “repent, and believe the gospel” (Matthew 1:15) and those who don’t.

We might say, then, that Jesus actually taught a kind of “radical exclusivity”. He didn’t just maintain boundaries when he refused to go along with the era’s hypocritical religious elite or the crowds clamoring for a king. Even more, he outlined the borders of his kingdom and defined who was blessed to be inside it and who was cursed to be outside it. He warmly invites sinners—all people, regardless of who or what they are and what they have and haven’t done—to come to him, and those who do become his flock, his people, his disciples, his friends. But those who choose to remain in their sins, to not do what he commands, to trust themselves and their own virtue instead of him and his sacrifice, are denied entry, by their own choice. Even if others, or they themselves, really, really want to be included.*

So if you come across similar assertions or arguments about Jesus and his radical way of welcoming and including people, be prepared to ask, “What do you mean by that?” and follow up with, “Where in the Scriptures do you get that?” They might struggle to answer, but if they respond with any of what we’ve evaluated here, you have been prepared. You have better answers, because you have the whole picture of Christ and his calling, both law and gospel, and the certainty that comes with taking God at his Word.

*Jesus teaches this division vividly in many of his parables: The Great Banquet (Matthew 22:1-14; Luke 14:15-24), the Rich Man and Poor Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31); the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30,36-43), the Net (Matthew 13:47-50), the Wise and Wicked Servants (Matthew 24:45-51), and the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). Of course, the separation between humble believers and the self-righteous is depicted most powerfully when Christ teaches what will happen at the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46).