T| A minister, when he had done preaching in a country village, said to a farm-labourer who had been listening to him, " Do you think Jesus Christ died to save good people, or had people ? " " Well, sir," said the man, " I should say He died to sa ve good people." " But did He die to save bad people ? " " No, sir ; no, certainly not, sir." " Well, then, what will become of you and me ? " " Well, sir, I do not know. I dare say you be pretty good, sir ; and I try to be as good as I can." That is just the common doctrine ; and after all, though we think it has died out among us, that is the religion of ninety-nine English people out of every hundred who know nothing of Divine grace : we are to be as good as we can ; we are to go to church or to chapel, and do all that we can, and then Jesus Christ died for us, and we shall be saved. Whereas the gospel is that He did not do anything at all for people who can rely on themselves, but gave Himself for lost and ruined ones. He did not come into the world to save self- righteous people ; on their own showing, they do not want to be saved. He comes because we need Him, and therefore He comes only to those who need Him ; and if we do not need Him, and are
1 T. Zahn, Bread and Salt from the Word of God, 235.
234 THE PHYSICIAN
such good, respectable people, we must find our own way to heaven. Need, need alone, is that which quickens the physician's foot- steps.1
2. That Christ's supreme purpose in coming was to heal men's souls means, further, that Christianity must be the universal religion. A religion which aims at the healing of spiritual disease, and which has confidence in its power to effect the cure, is entitled to supersede all other religions and to become the faith of all mankind ; and it will be well for the world when it has become such in fact. The world everywhere needs this religion, for sin is universal.
It is not unlikely that the Pharisees had an instinctive per- ception that the new love for the sinful exhibited in the conduct of Jesus meant a religious revolution, the setting aside of Jewish exclusiveness, and the introduction of a new humanity, in which Jew and Gentile should be one. They might very easily arrive at this conclusion. They had but to reflect on the terms they employed to describe the objects of Christ's special care. Publicans were to them as heathens, and " sinners " was in their dialect a synonym for Gentiles. It might, therefore, readily occur to them that the man who took such a warm interest in the publicans and sinners of Judaea could have no objection, on principle, to fellowship with Gentiles, and that when His religion had time to develop its peculiar tendencies, it was likely to become the religion, not of the Jews alone, but of mankind.
Whether the men who found fault with the sinner's Friend had so much penetration or not, it is certain at least that Jesus Himself was fully aware whither His line of action tended. He revealed the secret in the words, " I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." In describing His mission in these terms, He intimated in effect that in its ultimate scope that mission looked far beyond the bounds of Palestine, and was likely to have even more intimate relations with the outside world than with the chosen race. He knew too well how righteous his countrymen accounted themselves to cherish the hope of making a wide and deep impression upon them. He deemed it indeed a duty to try, and He did try faithfully and persistently, but always as one who
1 0. H. Spurgeon.
ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 235
knew that the result would be that described in the sad words of the fourth evangelist, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." And as He had an infinite longing to save, and was not content to waste His life, He turned His attention to more likely subjects ; to such as were not puffed up with the conceit of righteousness, and would not take it as an offence to be called sinners. Such He found among the degraded classes of Jewish society ; but there was no reason why they should be sought there alone. The world was full of sinners ; why, then, limit the mission to the sinful in Judaea ? Shall we say because the Jews were lesser sinners than the Gentiles ? But that would be to make the mission after all a mission to the righteous. If it is to be a mission to the sinful, let it be that out and out. Let Him who is intrusted with it say, " The greater the sinner the greater his need of Me." That was just what Christ did say in effect when He uttered with significant emphasis the words, " I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." It is, therefore, a word on which all men everywhere can build their hopes, a word by which the Good Physician says to every son of Adam, " Look unto me, and be saved."