The world portrays our Lord as angry and unyielding, and I’m sure that image often comes from professing Christians as much as from some unbelievers. Whenever the media wants to portray Christians in an unflattering light, they focus on the antics of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. WBC members routinely picket military funerals and any event they think will give them an opportunity to display their legalistic and hateful rhetoric.

Our job as Christians is to correct that misperception. The way we do that is to live as Jesus lived.

In Matthew 8:1-3, we see Jesus descending from the mountain with a crowd after His Sermon on the Mount. A leper approaches Him.

When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (ESV)

To touch a leper in Jewish culture was to be defiled, but Jesus’s touch cleansed the leper rather than defiling Him.

What I love is Jesus’s response: “I will,” or more appropriately, “I am willing.” The leper wasn’t asking Jesus if He could heal him. He was asking Jesus if He would heal him. Jesus’s response was that He was willing.

In the same manner, the Pharisees and the religious leaders questioned Jesus about the people he hung around with. Matthew 9:11-13 says:

And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (ESV)

Why were sinners attracted to Jesus while the religious leaders remained aloof? Two things stand out to me from Scripture.

First, Jesus had compassion on the lost. “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36, ESV)

Second, like the leper, the people drawn to Jesus recognized their need. In Matthew 19:16, we see a rich young man come to Jesus, asking Him, “What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” (KJV). Jesus recited several of the commandments. The young man’s response is informative: “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?” (19:20, KJV). By all accounts, this man had lived according to the standards of the law, but in the depth of his soul he knew that something was missing. In Mark 10:21, we see a piece not reflected here: “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (ESV).

These verses challenge me. How am I portraying Jesus to those around me? Am I quick to condemn, quick to judge? Or am I filled with compassion for the scattered sheep who are in search of a shepherd?

King Jesus! Do a work in me, in us, that we might reflect Your love and Your compassion to the scattered sheep, searching for a shepherd. Let us, like You, and by Your Spirit, be able to say, “I am willing!”

What say ye, Man of Valor?
Semper Fidelis!