The world is not divided into sinners and saints,
but repentant and unrepentant sinners.
The prerequisite for joining the family of God
isn’t to clean yourself up,
but to allow Jesus to clean you up.
That means turning from sins,
not clinging to them.
Jesus Himself told the Pharisees
He’d come to call sinners,
not the righteous, to repentance.
He wasn’t saying the Pharisees were righteous,
but that only those who knew they were sinners
could receive the gift of repentance and forgiveness.
Those who won’t repent, refuse the gift.
To simply try to love people into the Kingdom
without truth isn’t love at all,
it’s sentimentality.
The truth remains that sinful acts are sinful.
They twist God’s created design.
All who come to Christ for cleansing
must be willing to repent.
And all who repent are embraced by Christ,
and then ought to be embraced by the church,
including at His table
and in His sacraments.
But only after repentance, not before.
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