He Came For Me

Matt. 9:9-13 "As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This Scripture is appropriately called “The Calling of Mathew” but, really, couldn’t we, all of us, slip our names into that title? We’ve fallen short more times than we care to admit. More times than we care to admit even to God or Jesus, and yet, He came for us.

We were part of His agenda, His life and His sacrifice.

Through God’s amazing grace we are counted worthy of Him. We are forgiven, we are justified. It is as if we had always been perfect; Always from eternity past without sin. The reality often times escapes us. We find that we can’t quite wrap our minds around this complete unconditional forgiveness. “There has to be something,” we cry out in frustration. “There’s always a condition, always something to do, always a goal to reach.”

But we find none. We are left with the remarkable words of Jesus “For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

A revelation as bright as the morning star; He has come for the tax collector, the thief, corporate executives, street people, athletes, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, AIDS victims, farmers, used car salesmen and most amazing of all…

He came for me.