Articles
“A Friend of Sinners and No Friend of Sin”
The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’
Luke 7:34
A “friend” is someone who loves you at all times (Prov. 17:17), gives good advice (27:9-10), sticks by you (18:24), helps you when you are down (Ecc. 4:9-10), supports you physically and emotionally (Ecc. 4:11), and fights to protect you (Ecc. 4:12). Sometimes a friend has to be tough and call you out when you are wrong (Prov. 27:5-6; cf. 2 Sam. 12), but he is always kind (Job 6:14). A friend is someone who earns your trust by his loyalty (1 Sam. 20; cf. Acts 9:26-27) and helps you mature (Prov. 27:17).
Jesus embodied this teaching on friendship throughout his life and, supremely, in his sacrificial death (Jn. 15:13-15). Though his friendship with sinners earned him scorn from the self-righteous (Lk. 7:34, 39), he never apologized for his associations. After all, what kind of doctor refuses to see sick patients? (Lk. 5:31) Many reviled him because they thought this righteous man would be contaminated by such association with sinners. But they were wrong. Jesus purified those he came in contact with instead. We see this illustrated in Jesus’ healings of the ritually unclean; instead of their uncleanness rubbing off on him, his touch purified them! (Mt. 8:1-4; 9:18-26, etc.)
People reviled Jesus and they will revile us if we follow his example. But to befriend sinners requires us to have more confidence in Christ’s power to cleanse than fear of contamination from the world.
With this being said, we must take seriously the command to keep oneself “unstained from the world” (Jas. 1:27) and the warning that “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (Jas. 4:4).
On the surface, this may sound contradictory. How are we to love the world and be separate from it at the same time? In John’s writing, the word “world” is used in two different senses. Viewed as people, the world is to be loved (Jn. 3:16). Viewed as an evil system, organized under the domain of Satan, we must not love the world (1 Jn. 2:15-17) but live distinct from it (Jn. 15:18-19; Rom. 12:2).
What made Jesus so effective and magnetic to sinners was his love on the one hand and his holiness on the other. Jesus, our high priest, is “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). And yet he who was “above the angels” took on a status “below” the angels by joining our ranks and suffering with us (Heb. 1:5-14; 2:1-18; Phil. 2:5-11). For this reason, he is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” because he “was tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Jesus neither condoned sin, left people in their sin, nor showed any disdain for sinners. And his love was not passive. He did not just wait for people to get their act together but called sinners to repentance and held out the free gift of God (Jn. 4:1-26). In short, Jesus was a friend of sinners but no friend of sin.
We must not think of relationships with non-Christians primarily as dangers but as opportunities. Instead of avoiding them for fear of contamination, we are to befriend them and pray for their conversion believing that “he who is in [us] is greater than he who is in the world” (1 Jn. 4:4).
In Matthew 5:13-16, we are called to be salt and light. The very thing that makes salt and light effective is that they are so different from the thing they effect. For Christians to change the world we must be radically distinct from it. At the same time, we must remember that salt can only influence by contact with the world. May God help us befriend sinners and have no friendship with sin!
