The offense is the sin
When contemplating an ethical dilemma, I find it interesting that many people love to offer the phrase, “What would Jesus do?” What do you mean what would Jesus do? How about we answer this question: “What did Jesus do?” The answer to this question will take us to the real meaning of the word “sin.”
After calling Matthew the tax collector to be his disciple, Jesus was in Matthew’s home sharing a meal with his friends. The Jewish people considered tax collectors social pariah. Because the job was not salaried, tax collectors made their profits by cheating their own people from whom they collected the tax. So Matthew had a lot of interesting friends.
The scribes and Pharisees complained by asking the disciples, “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” Christ later told the Pharisees: They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick… for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Sinner. There’s that word again. So who is the sinner? Whenever I want to find the original meaning of a word in the Bible, I go to the Greek definition. This is because the New Testament was written in Greek, the cultural language of the time of Christ. To sin in Greek means to offend or to take offense. To offend or to take offense means to hurt or to be hurt.
This explains why Christ was comfortable being with sinners. He never took offense to people’s actions or their words. Christ taught them. Christ healed them. Christ showed compassion to them. Christ loved them. The only exception to Christ’s love and compassion were to the self-righteous. In Matthew 23:29,33, He said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! … Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”
Do you become offended by the words or actions of others? Whether a person drinks or not? By their religious beliefs? By their political views? Or their sexual orientation? How do you behave or feel when someone disagrees with you?
How do you treat your mind and your body? Do you offend it by putting yourself down with your own words? By drinking too much or using harmful drugs? By allowing yourself to fall into emotional tantrums that hurt your soul?
So what did Jesus do? Christ shared intimate meals in the homes of people he called sinners. At the disgust of a Pharisee, Christ allowed a prostitute to clean and kiss his feet with her hair. Christ made wine at a wedding feast just because his mother asked him to.
If you are so self-righteous to believe that you can judge and put another person down while you commit your own offenses by feeling hurt and hurting yourself, then you are lost and living in sin. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
So, please, enough of the hypocrisy. Focus on changing your own issues while loving and forgiving yourself and you will start your own journey to being filled with God’s unconditional love for yourself and for others. And, in this way, be like Christ: without sin.
Mother Owl
