EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/2/2026
9:30 PM
My
Worship Time Focus: Intro to “Calling a Wretched
Sinner; Confronting Self-righteous Hypocrites”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference:
Luke
5:27-32
Message of the verses: “27After that
He went out and looked at a tax collector named Levi sitting in
the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow Me.” 28And he
left everything behind, and got up and began following Him.
29And Levi gave a
big reception for Him in his house; and there was a
large crowd of tax collectors and other people who were
reclining at the table with them. 30The Pharisees and their
scribes began grumbling to His disciples, saying,
“Why do you eat and drink with the
tax collectors and sinners?” 31And
Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not
those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who
are sick. 32I have not
come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.’”
The following is John MacArthur’s introduction to
these verses that we will then be looking at as we go through this section of
Luke’s gospel.
“Human beings are inherently
religious. The image of God in man,
through corrupted by the fall, still compels people to worship. As a result, there are thousands of religions,
philosophies, and worldviews, ranging from primitive animistic religions all
the way to sophisticated religious systems.
But those religions, though differing widely from on another in the
details, nevertheless fall into two categories.
On the one hand, there is the religion of human achievement; on the
other hand the religion of divine accomplishment. In every religion other than biblical
Christianity, man achieves salvation by his own efforts. Buddhists seek nirvana by following the
Eightfold Path; Muslims hope to enter Paradise by following the Five Pillars of
Islam; Mormons seek godhood through baptism, membership in the Morman church,
accepting Joseph Smith and his successors as prophets of God, and going through
the temple ceremonies; Jehovah’s Witnesses seek to earn everlasting life on
earth by their morality and door-to-door proselytizing; Roman Catholics seek
salvation by means of the Mass, sacraments, prayer, and good works that
cooperate with grace to enable them to earn heaven (even if they have to be
aided by the works of others to escape purgatory).
“But all such self-religious efforts
to achieve salvation are utterly futile and serve only to damn the eternal
souls of those who vainly t rust in them.
There is only one way to receive right standing before God, the religion
of divine accomplishment—belief in the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The gospel, the ‘glorious gospel
of the blessed God’ (1 Timothy 1:11), the ‘gospel of the grace of God’ (Acts
20:24), ‘is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes’ (Rom.
1:16). The heart of the gospel is that ‘Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3; cf. Matt. 26:28; 2
Cor. 5:21; Gal. 1:4; Eph. 1:7; 5:2; 1 Peter 2:24; 3:18; 1 John 2:2; Rev. 1:5), ‘so
that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life’ (John 3:15; cf. vv. 16,
18, 36; 1:12; 6:40, 47; 11:25-26; 20:31; Acts 16:31; Romans 10:9). Salvation is entirely ‘by grace…through
faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of
works, so that no one may boast’ (Eph. 2:8-1).
Grace completely excludes works as a means of salvation (Rom.
11:6). God justifies the ‘ungodly,’ not
the godly (Rom. 4:5). The redeemed are those ‘to whom God credits righteousness
apart from works’ (v. 6) and ‘has saved…and called…with a holy calling, not
according to [their] works, but according to His own purpose and grace which
was granted [them] in Christ Jesus from all eternity’ (2 Tim. 1:9).
“By the time of Christ, the religion
of Israel had degenerated into a system of works-righteousness, of external
ritual instead of internal reality. As
the apostle Paul lamented concerning his fellow Jews, ‘Israel, pursuing a law
of righteousness, did not arrive as that law. Why? Because they did not pursue
it by faith, but as though it were by works’ (Rom. 9:31-32). Secure in their self-righteousness many, like
those in the synagogue at Nazareth (4:14-30), refused to acknowledge that they
were spiritually impoverished, imprisoned, blind, and oppressed (4:18).
“It was against that backdrop of
self-righteousness based on outward conformity to the law of God (cf. Mark
10:20) that Jesus made one of His most clarifying and definitive
statements. In verse 32, He declared, ‘I
have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ That statement expressed the essential
uniqueness of Christianity and concisely summarizes His mission. It sums up the whole glorious scheme of
salvation: the Lord Jesus Christ came to save repentant sinners (19:10). Christ’s statement also defines the church’s
mission. The heart of all gospel
ministry is calling sinners to repentance.
Salvation is not for those who think they are righteous, like those in
the synagogue at Nazareth and the scribes and Pharisees, but for those who know
they are not, like the tax collector in Luke 18:13-14). Thus Jesus centered His ministry on people
who understood their lost condition.
Often, these were the outcasts of society, which earned Him a reputation
as ‘a friend of tax collectors and
sinners’ (Luke 7:34). Because such people
were willing to come to grips with their true condition as hopeless sinners,
the Lord was able to minister to them (cf. 1 Cor. 1:26-31).
“This dramatic incident answers the
question of whose sins Jesus would forgive.
It reveals how deep into the dregs of society He would delve to rescue
lost sinners. In this account Jesus
saved someone at the very bottom—a hated, despised tax collector. The story of His call of Levi (Matthew) and
its aftermath falls into two contrasting parts: His call of a wretched sinner,
and His confrontation of self-righteous hypocrites.”
6/2/2026
10:44 PM
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