slave girl

Sin will always keep you longer than you wanted to stay, make you pay more than you ever wanted to pay, and take you further than you ever intended to go.

 

-My friend Blaine Bartel

  

  

A few years ago I ran across a story that still moves me every time I read it.  The story is re-counted in Steve Brown’s riveting book, A Scandalous Freedom. 

  

Abraham Lincoln went to a slave market.  There he noted a young, beautiful African-American woman being auctioned off to the highest offer.  He bid on her and won.  He could see the anger in the young woman’s eyes and could imagine what she was thinking, ’another white man will buy me, use me, and then discard me’. 

 

As Lincoln walked off with his ‘property’, he turned to the woman and said, ‘You’re free’.  ‘Yeah.  What does that mean?’ she replied.  ‘It  means that you’re free.’  ‘Does it mean I can say whatever I want to say?’  ‘Yes,’ replied Lincoln, smiling, ‘it means you can say whatever you want to say.’  ‘Does it mean,’ she asked incredulously, ‘that I can be whatever I want to be?’  ‘Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.’  ‘Does it mean,’  the young woman said hesitantly, ‘that I can go wherever I want to go?’  ‘Yes, it means you are free and you can go wherever you want to go.’ 

 

‘Then,’ said the woman with tears welling up in her eyes, ‘I think I’ll go with you.’ 

 

Brown continues…

  

That is what God has done for us.  It is what the Christian faith is all about.  We have been bought with a price, the price of God’s own Son.  We now have a new master, one who, once he paid the price, set us free. 

  

Do you realize that you are free?  Jesus never twists our arm—and he never does a hard-sell on us.  He simply sets us free and lets us decide what we will do with that freedom.  The question each of us must answer is: Will we turn and walk away—or will we, like the slave girl—follow him? 

   

 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.   (John 8:36, ESV)

   

bad company

The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies.  And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people.  O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ!  If Christ had done what you are doing, who would have ever been spared? 

 

-Martin Luther 

 

 

Jesus could have commanded the finest and fittest to enlist in his band of followers.  I mean here is a guy—and not just any guy mind you, he was God in the flesh—he stopped the waves in their tracks, shut the mouth of howling winds, walked on water, healed the most afflicted and delivered those tormented by the most evil of spirits.  And that’s not all.  He also raised the dead, turned water into wine, and fed five thousand hungry people with a couple crumbs that would feed a family of five.  

 

A casual glance at the members among those closest to Jesus from day one—and those closest to him today—is an eternal reminder that God isn’t the friend of the righteous.  And while many live lives of incredible sacrifice and service to God it’s always amazing to learn a little more about the real story behind those who follow Jesus best.  Why Jesus takes the biggest failures and makes the biggest wonders of them is a mystery I suppose.  He could seek out the first class and the pure breeds but he’s ever chasing down the low class and the half breeds.     

 

I’m not real fond of politically correct stands on everything from school choice to immigration to abortion to nativity scenes on court house lawns to what kind car a follower of Jesus is supposed to drive.  But when it comes to Jesus himself—I have no tolerance for a politically correct Jesus.  The only politically correct Jesus is the one constructed by his character assassins—they are alive and well.  While Jesus didn’t care what the high and mighty thought—his approach and his mission more importantly flew in the face of the modern day religious establishment.  When it came to whom Jesus hung out with and who Jesus didn’t hang out with, what was expected of him was a bitter disappointment for the majority.   

 

 15 And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ 17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’    (Mark 2:15-17, ESV)

 

A politically correct Jesus picks the right people as his closest confidants while the Jesus of history and Scripture selects the picked over.