Perfect Poverty Alone...

Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”--Matthew 9:10-13

The Pharisees RESENTED the healing of those sinners God Himself desired to heal!  The Pharisees proved themselves here to be the sickest of all...dead spiritually and willfully unaware of their own depravity.  

Spurgeon says this: "Hidden, unfelt, unconfessed iniquity is the true leprosy."  "But when sin is seen and felt, it has received its deathblow and the Lord looks with mercy upon the soul afflicted with it.  Nothing is more deadly than self righteousness, or more hopeful than contrition."

What comfort there is then when a man sees himself as altogether lost and ruined...totally defiled by sin and without hope..it is THIS very state that signifies hope!!  "A thorough sense of sin is one of the earliest works of grace in the heart."  

My God's ways are NOT my ways...so often I become discouraged as the Lord opens the eyes of my heart more and more and I see so much ugliness and pride.  But in Christ, I can rejoice in this very thing...a sign of a very hopeful state!

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!--Romans 11:33

Mercy is welcome news indeed,
To those that guilty stand:
Wretches that feel what help they need,
Will bless the helping hand.

Who rightly would his alms dispose,
Must give them to the poor:
None but the wounded patient knows
That comfort of his cure.

We all have sinned against our God:
Exception none can boast:
But he that feels the heaviest load,
Will prize forgiveness most.

No reckoning can we rightly keep;
For who the sums can know?
Some souls are fifty pieces deep;
And some five hundred owe.

But let our debts be what they may,
However great, or small;
As soon as we have naught to pay,
Our Lord forgives us all.

'Tis perfect poverty alone,
That sets the soul at large;
While we can call one mite our own,
We have no full discharge.

The Christian's duty, exhibited in a series of hymns, 1791