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Come As You Are
Article by Tom Gilbert

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9 NIV)

Come as you are, as you were,
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend, as an old enemy.
— Nirvana from “Come As You Are”

When Jesus walked the Earth he went about bringing Good News to others, especially for the downtrodden, the hurting, the sick and, of course, sinners.

He wasn’t going about condemning these people. His criticisms were mainly toward the religious leaders of the day and towards the self righteous.

This is an interesting thing. Christ came to call sinners, but he didn’t make it a requirement to get your life together first and be righteous. Instead he offered compassion and the invitation to follow him. He accepted them for who they were and he didn’t demand immediate change.

How very different from what people then, and now, expect of God. Most of us tend to think God won’t love us unless we are “good”. And since no one can measure up to the high standard of goodness we wallow in our unworthiness. We are insecure. We keep trying to get it right, but without realizing that God and Jesus are freely offering the help we so desperately need to live our lives. This is why grace is such an amazing thing. It is commonplace Christian theology that we are “saved by grace, not by righteousness” and yet we still attempt to live up to high moral standards without surrendering to this grace. Or worse, we simply compromise; believing that all will be forgiven without ever having a transformational change of heart.

Read the entire article here.

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