Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human

Don't allow the opinions of other people to shape your concept of him. Get to know him yourself, and let the goodness of God change you from the inside out.

Sometimes we are outright rude when we interact with people. We meet a gay guy or a couple living together, and we think we have the obligation and right to warn them what God thinks about their sexuality on our first meeting. As if their sex life is the first thing on God’s agenda. It’s not. Love is. Grace is. Mercy is. Jesus is.

Nowhere in the Bible, however, do we find God distinguishing between levels of sin. God doesn't share our rating system. To him, all sin is equally evil, and all sinners are equally lovable.

It seemed too good to be true. That's grace.

Grace is a person. And his name is Jesus.

But freedom starts with honesty. We aren’t doing ourselves any favors by defining our- selves as good and others as bad. Let’s just agree that we all need help, that we are all in this together.

Jesus is not your accuser. He’s not your prosecutor. He’s not your judge. He’s your friend and your rescuer. Like Zacchaeus, just spend time with Jesus. Don’t hide from him in shame or reject him in self-righteousness. Don’t allow the opinions of other people to shape your concept of him. Get to know him for yourself, and let the goodness of God change you from the inside out.

The common denominator is that we all need help.

The Bible is meant to be down-to-earth. It was written for real people facing real issues.

But difficult situations and wrong choices conspire to trap us in hopelessness.

We are often harsher judges than God himself.

Make rules and follow rules as needed, but don't focus on riles. Focus on faith. Focus on grace. Focus on Jesus.

That’s how we often react when grace comes at us. It’s awkward. God offers us something that’s too good to be true—unearned, unmerited, total forgiveness—and we stand there, stiff and uncomfortable, waiting for the embrace to stop so we can get back to the business of earning our way into heaven. We need to embrace grace. We need to learn how to hug back.

When you look in the eyes of grace, when you meet grace, when you embrace grace, when you see the nail prints in grace’s hands and the fire in his eyes, when you feel his relentless love for you - it will not motivate you to sin. It will motivate you to righteousness.

When we meet grace, it becomes the fuel of our faith. We pray, we read our Bibles, we worship and we live the purest lifestyle we can because we love a person.

No sooner do I conquer a bad habit than I become the biggest critic of anyone who still does what I just stopped doing.

We need a bigger estimation of God and a smaller estimation of sin.

Grace is God-given power to live differently.

Jesus didn’t care about the scandal. He cared about the scandalous.

You don’t have to be good to be Jesus’s friend. You just have to be honest.

Sometimes we get way too fixated on how powerful sin is and how weak we are. We worry that if we relax for a second, we'll mess up royally and ruin everything. Ironically, our paranoia only serves to make us more conscious of our sinfulness.

I can imagine myself in her place: trapped by a sordid past, terribly alone, defenseless before a crowd of jeering judges who hold my life in their hands. And then, when hope is lost, the one who truly has the right to condemn me looks at me. In his eyes I read something completely unexpected. Compassion.

A moment with Jesus changed everything.

God transforms us one area at a time.

Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” Jesus said. “Sick people do.” That’s why he spent his time with the needy, the helpless, and the depraved. He came down to their level because they could never rise to his. He wasn’t out to prove how good he was or how bad they were. He just wanted to offer them hope.

God shows us what authentic love is in John 3:16, probably the most famous verse in the Bible. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (NKJV). God so loved the world. He loved the whole world; not just the good part of the world, the part that loved him already, or the part that he knew would love him back. We need to expand our hearts, our comfort zones, and our friend zones. He gave his only Son. He was willing to make real sacrifices to build real relationships. Sometimes we need to put aside projects and schedules for the sake of people. Like Jesus, we need to be interruptible. Whoever. He showed unconditional love and acceptance. Love is risky. We might be rejected. We might be crucified by the people we are trying to help. But ultimately, love will prevail.

No sinner is irreparable or irredeemable. No sin is so great that the blood of Jesus cannot cover it. His love is so deep and wide that he can, in one moment of our faith, forgive our past, present, and future sins. Sin is simply not a problem for God.

We need to abandon our scale and adopt God's because our misguided labels keep us from the right kind of interaction with people.