Help Me

In a school classroom, who needs the help from the teacher to understand how to solve a math problem, the smartest, top student who always gets a straight “A” grade, or the student who always borders between failing and just barely passing, and is always saying, I need help? A straight “A” student doesn’t need any help, they already know what to do. It is the student who struggles to learn who needs that extra help, and that is who the teacher really is trying to reach.

In a hospital, who should receive attention first, someone who has a severe bleeding head wound or someone who has a scrape on their knee? When the doctor walks into the waiting room and surveys the patients, obviously someone who has the head injury is the one who needs immediate attention, while a scrape on a knee can just go back home and put a bandage on.

A similar kind of situation happened in Matthew 9, about the sinners and the righteous.

Matthew 9:10-13  “And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.

And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?

But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

We see here that Jesus came to give mercy to those who needed to be forgiven. Jesus didn’t come to save people who were perfect and sinless–they don’t need saving because they would be perfect and righteous already. It is the sin in a sinner that needs to be removed and the only way to do that is through Christ.

You wouldn’t throw a life preserver to someone who was already safe on the boat, but you would toss it to a drowning person. Jesus wouldn’t have had to come to Earth to offer forgiveness if everyone was perfect. He came to call sinners to repentance.

People came up to Jesus, asking Him to heal them. They were seeking for help. Someone was let down through a roof of a house just to be healed. A man came to Jesus, asking for Him to heal his daughter. Jesus told him that if he believed all things were possible, and the man replied, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. This man realized that he needed to be more faith, and he admitted it to Jesus. He realized his problem and he asked for help. Those are the kinds of people who Jesus came to save. Not the whole. Not the righteous. The sinners.

Sin is a sickness, just the same as cancer, or lukemia, although obviously far worse. This sickness is something that everyone has, but in order to get cured someone first needs to admit their need for a cure, and that cure is only found in Christ Jesus. Without the forgiveness that only comes from the Lord, eternal life is unattainable. It is unreachable. Locked away. To unlock His forgiveness we need to be able to admit our sins. 

1 John 1:6-10  “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

Can you admit that you are a sinner? Will you come forward to the Lord and say, help me?

In Christ,

Andrew