I once overheard a man blurt out, "I thought you were a good guy!" after he found out that his friend enjoyed an occasional alcoholic drink. In Mark 2:15-17 we read that Jesus ate with such inferior "sinners" as defined by the Pharisees and their rules. Are we sometimes guilty of looking down our noses at others who believe differently to us. The scribes used the word sinners in a sense of outcasts, narrowly defined by their human standards, which they mistakenly thought were God's. The Scribes and Pharisees had a history of faithfulness to the law and were proud descendants of martyrs under Antiochus Ephiphanes. They viewed others as second-rate sinners by comparison. Do we ostracize people who don't have our proud church history or meet our fabricated standards? Next time we are tempted to do so, let's remember that Jesus ate with those that religious people had cast aside.
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