By Kevin DeYoung *

Everyone who knows anything about the gospels—and even those who don’t—knows that Jesus was a friend of sinners. He often drew the ire of the scribes and Pharisees for eating with sinners (Luke 15:2). Jesus clearly recognized that one of the insults hurled against him was that he was “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Luke 7:34). As Christians we love to sing of this Pharisaical put-down because it means that Jesus is a friend to sinners like us. We also find ourselves challenged by Jesus’ example to make sure we do not turn away outsiders in a way that Jesus never would.

As precious as this truth is—that Jesus is a friend of sinners—it, like every other precious truth in the Bible, needs to be safeguarded against doctrinal and ethical error. It is all too easy, and amazingly common, for Christians (or non-Christians) to take the general truth that Jesus was a friend of sinners and twist it all out of biblical recognition. So “Jesus ate with sinners” becomes “Jesus loved a good party,” which becomes “Jesus was more interested in showing love than taking sides,” which becomes “Jesus always sided with religious outsiders,” which becomes “Jesus would blow bubbles for violations of the Torah.”

Here we have an example of a whole truth being used for a half truth in the service of a lie. Once, as a younger man in ministry, I made an offhanded comment about how Jesus “hung out with drunks.” I was gently and wisely corrected by an older Christian who had himself overcome alcohol addiction. He challenged me to find anywhere in Scripture where Jesus was just “hanging out” with people in a state of drunkenness. In an effort to accentuate the grace of Christ, I stepped beyond (around, over, and away) from the biblical text and made it sound like Jesus loved nothing more than to yuck it up with John Belushi in Animal House.

If we are to celebrate that the Lord Jesus is a glorious friend of sinners—and we should—we must pay careful attention to the ways in which Jesus actually was a friend to sinners. Omitting the story of the woman caught in adultery (for reasons of textual criticism), I count five main passages in the gospels where Jesus is chastised for getting too close to sinners.
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1. Matthew 9:9-13; Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32 – This is the story of Jesus calling Matthew the tax collector to be his disciple. We find Jesus reclining at table with many tax collectors and sinners, “for there were many who followed him” (Mark 2:15). When the scribes and Pharisees grumble about the company he keeps, Jesus tells them that he has “not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).
2. Matthew 11:16-19; Luke 7:31-35 – Here Jesus rebukes the “people of this generation” because they rejected John the Baptist for being too tight and reject the Son of Man for being too loose. It’s from this incident that we get the phrase “friend of sinners.” We should note that it was an insult heaped upon Jesus by his enemies. This doesn’t mean Christ didn’t own it and we shouldn’t sing it, but it suggests he may not have owned it in every way. If Jesus was not a “glutton and drunkard” as his opponents thoughts, so he may not have been “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” in exactly the way they imagined either.
3. Luke 7:36-50 – Right on the heels of this story comes another one like it in Luke. A sinful woman anoints Jesus with expensive ointment and wipes Jesus’ feet with her tears and the hair of her head. When Jesus is corrected for letting this “sinner” touch him, he reminds Simon that those who are forgiven much love much. In the end, Jesus forgives the woman her sin and announces “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:50).
4. Luke 15:1-2 – The setting for the parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son of Luke 15 is found in the first two verses of that chapter. As the tax collectors and sinners “were all drawing near” to Jesus, the Pharisees and scribes grumbled that Jesus was receiving them to eat with them. The three parables that follow demonstrate how God seeks out the lost (15:3, 8, 20) and how pleased God is when sinners repent (15:7, 10, 21-24).
5. Luke 19:1-10 – Again, the Jewish leaders grumble because Jesus “has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner” (Luke 19:7) Though Zacchaeus repents and is a changed man (19:8), the Jews simply cannot accept that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (19:10) and that this notorious tax collector has been saved (19:9).

​So what lessons can we draw from these episodes? In what way was Jesus a friend of sinners? Did he have a grand strategy for reaching tax collectors? Did he indiscriminately “hang out” with drunks and prostitutes? Was he an easy going live-and-let-live kind of Messiah? What we see from the composite of these passages is that sinners were drawn to Jesus, that Jesus gladly spent time with sinners who were open to his teaching, that Jesus forgave repentant sinners, and that Jesus embraced sinners who believed in him.
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Jesus was a friend of sinners not because he winked at sin, ignored sin, or enjoyed light-hearted revelry with those engaged in immorality. Jesus was a friend of sinners in that he came to save sinners and was very pleased to welcome sinners who were open to the gospel, sorry for their sins, and on their way to putting their faith in Him.

*Republished with permission from The Gospel Coalition website.

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When the expression “a life of prayer” comes to mind, people usually think of a devout figure whose life is characterized by frequent and extended prayer.

But there is another very different possible meaning that we should always remember is contained in this expression.  In a very real sense our lives are part of our prayers: we pray what we live, not just what we say.

Although we may not find a biblical verse that makes this statement in exactly those words, we find many scriptures that make the principle clear.  For example, the apostle Paul wrote: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters … to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1).  When we remember the many biblical verses that equate prayer with sacrifice (Psalm 141:2, etc.), what Paul writes takes on even clearer meaning –  that just as our prayers are given as offerings or sacrifices to God (Revelation 8:4), the sacrifice of our “bodies” –  our lives –  is also part of our worship.   Paul urges us to make our lives  just as much a pleasing offering to God as our verbal prayers.

The Christian writer and preacher A. W. Tozer referred to this principle when he wrote: "We cannot pray in love and live in hate and still think we are worshiping God."  Tozer’s comment is well known, but he followed it up with an analogy that is not so often quoted and which summarizes the broader principle:

Let us suppose we are back in the old days of the high priest, who took incense into the [temple sanctuary] and went behind the veil and offered it there. And let us suppose that rubber—the worst-smelling thing I can think of when it burns—had been available in those days. Let us suppose that chips of rubber had been mixed with the incense, so that instead of the pure smoke of the spices filling the temple with sweet perfume, there had been the black, angry, rancid smell of rubber mixed with it. How could a priest worship God by mixing with the sweet-smelling ingredients some foul ingredient that would be a stench in the nostrils of priest and people?

Tozer’s  analogy is a good one, and we might well contrast it with what Paul instructs us in Ephesians:  “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).   Paul shows here that our walk – if it is in the way of love –  is equivalent to a fragrant offering or sacrifice, just as that of Christ was. 

But the principle of our lives being prayers is not just an analogy that we can dismiss or overlook. The relationship between our lives and our prayer “offerings” is as important as it is direct. We see this from the beginning of the biblical record with the story of Cain whose offering was rejected by God:

The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:4-7).

In Cain’s case God rejected a physical offering because of his not doing right, but the New Testament makes it clear that the same applies to our verbal prayers: “We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will” (John 9:31). The Book of Hebrews gives a clear example of this interaction between our everyday and prayer lives: “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.  And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Hebrews 13:15-16).  Our sacrifice of prayer and praise is directly linked, Hebrews says, to our walk, our behavior and our deeds.

The Bible’s teaching is clear, then:  our everyday life is part of our “prayer” life and God “hears” what we do just as much as what we say.  It is often said that our private lives must match our public prayers, but our everyday lives must match our private prayers, too. One of the greatest ways we can improve our prayer lives is to bring our everyday lives into alignment with them. It’s a fact that gives new meaning to the old question, “How’s your prayer life?”

*Download our free ebook on prayer,  YOUR CALL:  USING THE DIRECT PRIVATE LINE OF PRAYER here.

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“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
 



For many Christians John 3:16 is their best known and most loved verse in the Bible. It has been called the “golden verse” of Scripture, one of the Bible’s most succinct summaries of the gospel, and the ultimate single-verse summary of God’s plan for humanity.   But many do not realize just how much meaning is packed into this one short verse –  its very familiarity often obscures its richness –  and it can be profitable to look at each part of the verse more closely:

“For…” The word “For” with which this verse begins points back to John’s previous statement that: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:14-15). This refers, of course, to the bronze image of a serpent that God instructed Moses to place on a high pole for the healing of the Israelites who acknowledged their sin in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4-9). In that story, everyone who “looked at” the serpent was granted life, and in John’s Gospel we see Christ made it clear that in the same way whoever “believes” on him is granted eternal life (John 3:16).  Looking and believing are equal in these accounts of the same story –  faith is “looking” without the eyes, or beyond what the physical eyes see, to a reality that saves (see our article “Seeing Is Believing: The Serpent on the Stake” here).  That is the background to John 3:16 – that our belief is not just the acceptance of an abstract idea about God and what he has done, but an active looking to the Person who is salvation.

“God so loved…” We should also realize that when this verse tells us that God “so” loved the world, it does not mean God loved the world “so much.”  Instead, the Greek in which the verse was written clearly means God loved the world “in this way.” In other words, “God loved the world in this way – he gave his only son …” It’s an important difference.  The Old Testament often stresses God’s love (Isaiah 63:9; Hosea 11:1-4, etc.), but John 3:16 shows the way in which that love was expressed.

“the world…” The Greek word translated “world” is kosmos which can mean not just the physical world or universe, but also –  as in this case –  all the inhabitants of the world. Rather than just telling us that God loved people in general, “the world” emphasizes the all-inclusive and universal love that God displayed – love of everyone without exception.

“that he gave…” Giving is, of course, characteristic of the nature of God –  it is one of the things that most clearly defines him –  and the gift of his son is his greatest gift, eclipsing all others (Romans 8:32).  The gift was foreshadowed in the prophets, as Isaiah wrote: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given…” (Isaiah 9:6).  

“his one and only son...” In this phrase John stresses that God’s love extended to giving his “one and only" son – a sacrifice that reminds us of the story of Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac (Hebrews 11:17).  Here the expression marks the unique nature of the gift that God was willing to give (1 John 4:9).

“that whoever believes on him…” The word “whoever” signifies “everyone” and stresses again the universal nature of God’s gift and its availability to anyone who will accept it. John reiterates this truth a little later in the same chapter: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life …” (John 3:36).  Unseen in our English translations is the fact that the word “believes” is a “present participle” in the Greek of the New Testament – a verbal form that stresses continuity of action. The required belief is not just associated with a one-time emotional occurrence – it is ongoing, and it only those who continue to believe who receive the gift (Matthew 24:13).

 “shall not perish but have eternal life.” Here we see as much stress on God’s desire that we do not perish (2 Peter 3:9) as on his desire to grant us life. The specific words “eternal life” are typical of the teaching of the apostle John, who uses them more than twice as many times as all the other Gospel writers combined. John here uses the expression in the present tense to stress that the life God offers us is not just life that we “shall” have at some future time, but spiritual life that begins now, in the present, and continues eternally from now.

The total message of this great verse is echoed by John in his first epistle: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). But it is only in John 3:16, the verse we all know but do not always appreciate to the full, that the great message is so clearly and thoroughly explained.

The Gospel of Luke records a group of parables in which Jesus gave three examples of the concept of lost and found: the story of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:1-31).  

​We know these are not just three similar stories that were grouped together thematically as Luke specifically shows they were given at the same time (vss. 3, 8, 11) in response to the Pharisees’ criticism that Jesus ate with “sinners” (vss. 1-2). 

In the first parable, Jesus said: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” (vs. 4). In the second, he continued: “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?” (vs. 8). And in the third and best known parable we are told that Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had and set off for a distant country (vss. 11-13). This parable also tells us that when the prodigal son finally returned:  “…while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (vs. 20), showing the father had been waiting and looking for his son.

In all three of these parables we are told that when that which was lost was found there was great rejoicing (vss. 6, 9, 32), and the moral of each is clearly that God rejoices in “finding” the lost soul. But these are not just a group of similar parables.  Not only were they given at the same time in response to the same situation, with a clear connection between the stories, but also if we look closely, there is another important  aspect of what is said.
 
In the first parable we are told specifically that the sheep that was lost was one in a hundred; in the second parable the coin that was lost was one in ten; in the third parable the son who was lost was one of two.   Although each parable makes the same point, there is an additional message in the complete sequence – in all three taken together. 
 
Jesus began by showing that even one of many (one in a hundred) has great value.  One hundred  sheep would have been a very large flock in ancient Palestine, and one missing sheep might hardly be noticed.  Spiritually, the message is clear: God values everyone who is lost –  even if they are “only one” of the vast number of humans who have lived.  The sequence continues, however, in showing the relative worth of the one of ten coins that was lost. The fact that the woman called on her friends to rejoice with her when the coin was found shows that its value must have been significant to her – probably a tenth of all her savings. In the final parable, the sequence concludes by showing the tremendous value to his father of the one of two sons who had been “lost.”  The father in the story is shown as perhaps having been searching the distant road continually, hoping for his son’s return.
 
In this parable we often concentrate on the uncharitable reluctance of the elder of the two sons to rejoice when the younger one returned.  Although that is an important part of the story, we should not forget that the discussion between the father and the elder brother also serves another purpose – to show the great value of the lost brother who was found.  The elder brother’s argument is essentially that the father was placing as much value on the young brother as on the one who had stayed faithful –  and that argument was in fact accurate. 

The parable makes it clear that the elder brother would receive his due reward (vs. 31), but the father replies to him that: “… we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (vs. 32).
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The three “lost and found” parables Jesus gave were not just repetition for effect. The interlinked stories show successively  the value to God of the one who is lost. The sequence demonstrates at its beginning God’s personal attentiveness towards all of humanity and at its end his deeply focused love for each individual. Together, the parables show that no one is too small or insignificant to be viewed as of great value to God, and that every individual who returns to God, whatever their sins of the past, is of immense value – as valuable in God’s sight as any other.  The three parables show as clearly as anything in the New Testament not only the joy of the lost being found, but also the loving acceptance with which God views the one who is found.
 
* For more about the parables of Jesus, download our free e-book The City on a Hill.

 The two unmistakable themes of the Gospel of John are belief and love.*  Although John sometimes stresses these concepts separately, he also frequently connects them, as we see in verses such as John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (emphases added here and in the following scriptures). John also shows how the two great themes of love and belief were tied together in the words of Jesus himself: “… the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God” (John 16:27).

When we move beyond John’s Gospel to his epistles, we find the same two themes are also linked there. For example, the connection between belief and love is perfectly summarized in a single verse in the apostle’s first letter: “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us” (1 John 3:23).
 
But although these two themes are clear enough in John’s writing, we do not always notice that he is teaching us an important lesson regarding them: that the one spiritual quality affects the other.

Belief Increases Love

Notice what John says regarding the first aspect of this interaction – that of belief affecting love.  In 1 John 4:19 the apostle tells us: “We love because he first loved us.” Although the word belief does not appear directly in this verse, the concept is obviously implied – we come to love God because we believe God first loved us.
   
John connects belief with love in many other verses in this letter –  such as 1 John 5:1 where he tells us: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.” 

But John evidently did not feel the necessity to elaborate on the connection between belief and love, as it is not a difficult one to see for ourselves in our own personal experience: the more we come to see and understand God and believe in him and his nature, the more we come to love him.   Put simply, the more we come to know God, the more we come to love him.

Love Increases Belief

But John also shows this principle is reciprocal: the more we love God, the more our belief is strengthened. Consider the following verses.

“Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4: 7B).

In this case, love is mentioned first and then knowing God – our belief in him –  comes as a result. It is easy to read over this verse without seeing the connection John is making, but it is clear once we focus on it.   The apostle makes the same connection in other verses. For example:

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12).

What proof do we have of God? John asks. His answer is straightforward –  if we truly love one another, then God is living in us and we experience him in our lives in this way.  John looks at the other side of this situation a few verses later:

“… whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

This obviously has vital relevance for Christian life and belief.  As we come to love, John tells us, we come to experience God –  and so to believe in him.  Near the end of his letter, John unites the two principles of love and belief once again:

“In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands… This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:3).

John is not alone in making this connection. The New Testament shows on many occasions that spiritual qualities, such as belief and love, do not exist in a vacuum.  The apostle Paul, for example, wrote on how belief interacts with love: “…The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). John’s epistles show the same truth from both directions –  the more we come to truly believe, the more we will also love; and vice versa, the more we truly love, the more we will come to truly believe.

Ultimately, for John, love and belief cannot be separated. We cannot develop the kind of love God exhibits without believing, or truly know and believe God without loving.  As has been wisely said, “Belief is the eye of love, love is the heart of belief.” Both are necessary for the eternal life that, John tells us, God has desired to give us from the beginning (1 John 2:24).
 
 * See the chapter on these two themes in our free e-book Inside the Four Gospels.