What is brokenness? What does God think of it? And how should the body of Christ handle it?
The answers to these questions reveal how freeing Christianity is.
The word broken indicates that something is not how it was intended to be, and that’s the reality of humankind. Because of the Fall, everyone is affected by sin and needs to be restored.
Here’s the good news: God accepts us in our broken state. In other words, he doesn’t require us to get ourselves together before approaching him for salvation. This news is made increasingly good because the reality is that we can’t fix ourselves even if we try. Only God can forgive us and then provide the strength we need, through the Holy Spirit, to continue resisting sin.
What is the body of Christ to do with broken people? Accept them also and point them to their Savior.
Look at it this way, as Christians we have access to the best news available: there is hope in Jesus for forgiveness, freedom from sin, and eternal life. Just like Jesus, we must share this news with everyone, even when it means reaching out to society’s outcasts. Jesus’s actions in Mark 2:13-17 serve as an example of how we should treat broken people, and view our mission on earth.
Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him.
So Levi got up and followed him. Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.)
But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
God welcomes everyone, his gift of forgiveness is free, and he will continue to help those who struggle with sin as long as they turn to him.
This is what makes Christianity unique.
Also see:
The Gospel Unwrapped
Can You Be Forgiven?About Jesus