Jesus had just called a tax collector to follow Him and then sat down to eat with “sinners.” The religious experts were offended, but Jesus answered with a piercing line: God desires mercy more than sacrifice, and He came for sinners, not for those who think they are already righteous. In one sentence, He flipped their idea of holiness upside down and invited them—and us—to rethink what God really wants from His people.

When Religion Replaces Relationship

It is easy to slip into a faith that is mostly motions: church attendance, Christian language, doing the “right” things so we feel safe and respectable. The Pharisees in Matthew 9 were experts in this. They knew the rules, guarded the boundaries, and yet stood at a distance from the very people Jesus was welcoming. Jesus reached back to Hosea and reminded them, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). God is not impressed by empty performance; He wants a heart that knows Him and reflects His compassion.

When religion replaces relationship, we start measuring holiness by how separate we are from “those people,” instead of how closely we walk with the Lord. Jesus refuses that kind of safe, insulated faith. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:17). If we claim to know this Savior, our lives must look less like a museum of spiritual trophies and more like a hospital where broken sinners—including us—are welcomed and loved.

Called as We Are, Changed as We Come

Jesus says, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:13). That is wonderfully humbling news. He is not recruiting the self-sufficient, but those who know they are spiritually sick. The doorway into His kingdom is not our record but our repentance. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), which means every one of us belongs in that crowd of sinners around His table.

But Jesus does not merely accept us as we are and leave us as we are. In another place He says, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). His welcome always includes a turning—a breaking with our old ways and a new life shaped by His grace. The same mercy that receives us in our mess also reshapes our desires, our habits, and our loves, so that we begin to look like the One who called us.

Learning the Language of Mercy

If God desires mercy, then mercy must become our native tongue. That means more than just feeling sorry for people; it means moving toward them with the same kindness God has shown us. Jesus commands, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). We start speaking the language of mercy when we listen before we judge, when we move toward the difficult person instead of avoiding them, when we choose to cover an offense rather than replay it.

Mercy is costly. It means absorbing wrongs we could punish, offering forgiveness when we could hold a grudge, giving time and energy to people who might never repay us. Yet this is exactly how God has treated us: “Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). As we practice mercy in our homes, churches, workplaces, and online, we declare with our lives that “Mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13).

Lord Jesus, thank You for calling sinners like me and showing me mercy instead of giving me what I deserve. Teach me today to reflect Your heart—help me choose mercy over judgment in my words, my reactions, and my relationships.

In spite of our lip-service to democracy, Americans are a decidedly class-conscious people. The very politicians and educators and church leaders among us who sound abroad the praises of the common man and plead for equal rights for all are in private practice as aloof from the plain people as the proudest monarch could ever be. There exists among us an aristocracy composed of famous people, rich men, social lions, actors, public figures and headliners of one kind or another, and these are a class apart. Beneath them, standing off in wild-eyed admiration, are the millions of anonymous men and women who make up the mass of the population. And they have nothing in their favor--except that they were in the heart of Jesus when He died upon the cross.

Within the church also there exists a class consciousness, a reflection of that found in society. This has been brought over into the church from the world. Its spirit is completely foreign to the spirit of Christ, utterly opposed to it, indeed; and yet it determines to a large degree the conduct of Christians. This is the source of the evil we mention here.

If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. - John 15:20

We may fairly infer that in the reception a disciple of Christ may expect from the world, we have one of the points in which, very specially, the likeness of a true disciple to the Master will be brought out. If they have called Him Beelzebub, they will not grace us with the fine names of approbation and flattery. " If they have not received My sayings," they will turn a deaf ear to yours. " If ye were of the world, the world would love its own." Now, let me say a plain word about this matter. That law is in a fashion abrogated now. Nineteen centuries have not passed in vain. The "world" - meaning thereby the aggregate of godless men, " society," to use a modern phrase- has been largely leavened by Christian principles and sentiment. An atmosphere has been created, else all these centuries would have passed in vain. But whilst that is quite true, and I suppose in lands like ours we do not need to be afraid of the rougher forms of the world’s enmity, it does not seem to me that in substance this law has ceased to operate, nor will it, until either the Church has become wholly worldly - which, thank God! it never will do - or until the world has become wholly Christ’s. There are plenty of evidences round us that it still remains true that an out-and-out consistency of Christian conduct shall be unwelcome to the mass of society. You have only to look at the bitter antagonism to aggressive Christianity which is manifested in much of our popular literature to see that. They used to burn us; they only sneer at us nowadays; but the sentiment is pretty much the same. In your Christian activity, touch the social sins of this generation, and you will see the claws come out fast enough, and scratch deep enough, for all the velvet skin and the purring that sometimes is heard. Let a man live the life, and shape himself after Christ’s pattern, and he will not miss having to bear his share of the treatment given to his Master. If we take Him for our pattern, and try to be like Him, we have to make up our minds to "go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach," and to live a godly life amidst ungodly people; and that will never be done without some experience of the deep-seated antagonism between the true disciple and the world.