“And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’”‭‭ Mark‬ ‭2:17‬ ‭‬‬

This is personally so encouraging to me. I know how it goes. We like to put certain Christians on a pedestal. Some of them enjoy being perceived as perfect. But Jesus has no time for those who think they have it all together. In fact he remembers only too well his encounters with people like that: They were the Pharisees,  his greatest enemies.

If, like me, you are only too aware of your weakness, failures and sins, then this verse is great news for us. No matter how sick you continue to be, Jesus is the Great Physician. No matter what sin you have committed, he is willing and ready to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

There are two types of people who go to church: those who like to pretend they are perfect, and those who know that, despite their best efforts, they will never be perfect this side of eternity.

I wonder what we can do to ensure that we don’t feed the illusion that “special Christians” are superior to ordinary ones. How can we learn to be more honest and open about the ongoing struggles we all have? We don’t need always to share details, of that I’m sure. Wisdom plays a part here. But we do others major damage if we give the impression we are anything other than needy people who are wholly dependent on God.

I’m emerging from a brutally hard season in life. But even as I emerge with my feet on more solid ground than I’ve felt in a long time, I still face a life that, like many of my cohorts from Bible college, wasn’t the one I envisioned as an earnest Christian teenager in youth group and then college. And no amount of peeling off layers of myself to get to my core heart is going to rescue me from the twists and turns my story has taken.

Don’t hear fatalism in that last sentence. Like the woman diagnosed with terminal cancer, there’s a precious jewel hidden in the layers of suffering and self-sacrifice with what seems a permanent blight on one’s life. Among other issues, I struggle with multiple chronic illnesses. Though death is certainly not imminent, I think of spiritually dying to self as I face more and more physical issues that evidence the fact that my physical self is in fact dying. I am a jar of clay. Unlike a hard marriage or family relationship or ministry commitment, I can’t escape these physical symptoms no matter how hard I try. I can’t run from them, so I have to face them head on and figure out how to live abundantly in light of them.

And that learning has equipped me to persevere in the other issues in my life I could run from if I didn’t feel constrained by God’s instructions through his Word.

Learning to Endure

My dad has been a great encouragement to me. He has chronic heart failure, and we almost lost him last March. But he recovered enough to get out of the hospital, and after a day at home he drove back up to his farm to sit in the office and “tend to business.” He bought a Gator (a farm utility vehicle like a golf cart) to drive between the tractor shed and the Quonset hut, where he restores old tractors. His hip has been bothering him, and he moves slowly. But he moves. He gets a fraction done in a day compared to his prime years, and I fully expect to find him slumped over a tractor one day. But I applaud him for his perseverance. He models for me how I want to face both my physical limitations and my emotional ones.

Sometimes, obeying God is hard. Many days, submitting to his laws feels restricting. It’s one thing to honor our faithful God with faithfulness to others when the relationships are easy or affirming. But God is faithful to us when we’re faithless (2 Tim. 2:13). He persevered with us when we turned away from him. Jesus followed through on doing the right thing, even at infinite cost to himself. And it was hard. Yet herein lies the great paradox Jesus himself taught us:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? (Luke 9.23–25″ data-version=”esv” data-purpose=”bible-reference”>Luke 9:23–25)

God doesn’t need me to affirm Jesus’ words for them to be true. But I affirm them nonetheless, and can attest to them from my experience. And this truth encourages me to persevere, stumbling physically and emotionally at times. 

There’s much talk of self-love in Christian circles right now, the kind of self-love that promotes a perceived circumstantial happiness. When I hear of Christian bloggers or authors or even just professing Christians in my own private life diverging from orthodox Christian faith or values because it’s “too hard,” I feel a depressing weight on my shoulders. Their quest for happiness outside of orthodoxy demoralizes me in a way a combative atheist never could. They demoralize me in a way even my own particular burdens of suffering do not.

“The Lord’s loving-kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). Scripture often uses high and lofty expressions of God’s great compassion. But what does that compassion look like in tangible human terms? And are God’s people able to replicate His compassion?

The Old Testament furnishes a wonderful, practical, real-life illustration of God’s compassion in the account of David and Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth, a grandson of Saul, was permanently disabled. From a human perspective, he seemed the least likely person on earth for David to befriend and show kindness to.

He was the sole surviving male heir of Saul, the one person left on earth who might have tried to claim that the throne belonged to him by birthright. He was living in exile when David found him—forgotten, fearful and essentially an outcast. He did not seek David’s favor, nor did David have any legal obligation to him. Yet David showed him extreme kindness in a way that epitomizes godly compassion, and perfectly reflects what Christian ministry to hurting people should look like.

David and Saul could hardly have been more different. Saul—towering, stately, physically robust—had been the people’s choice to be Israel’s king, but he had failed miserably and sinned egregiously, so God rejected him. God’s choice to be his successor (and to establish the kingly line that would eventually produce Israel’s Messiah) was David—small in stature, still in his youth, shepherding his father’s flocks when Samuel anointed him as king. Of course, Saul knew full well that God had rejected him and blessed David. Saul’s murderous contempt for David was well known, and his rage and paranoia eventually drove him mad.

He pursued David relentlessly with the aim of killing him. Saul thus squandered his power and his kingly authority, opposing God. This continued for years, until Saul’s armies were defeated by the Philistines. Saul himself was mortally wounded during that battle, and he finally fell on his own sword. “Thus Saul died with his three sons, and all those of his house died together” (1 Chronicles 10:6).

One of Saul’s sons who died that day was Jonathan. Even though Saul had made himself David’s sworn enemy, Jonathan had become David’s closest earthly friend. In the wake of that disastrous battle with the Philistines, David mourned greatly not only for Jonathan but also for Saul (2 Samuel 1:17).

That David would have any compassion at all toward Saul or his family was extraordinary. Saul made David’s life enormously difficult for years, forcing him into nomadic exile, causing David to live in caves and on the run.

Moreover, it was common for Middle-Eastern kings in circumstances like David’s to kill off all surviving family members from the previous dynasty in order to prevent any threat of insurrection and eliminate possible claimants to the throne. It is significant that David’s behavior toward the house of Saul was the exact opposite. He had made a covenant with Jonathan years before, promising that he would extend his lovingkindness to Jonathan’s offspring and preserve them as Jonathan had done for David (1 Samuel 20:15-17).

And that is why in 2 Samuel 9, we read an extended account of David’s kindness to the one remaining descendant of Jonathan, a disabled son named Mephibosheth. That part of the story begins when David, conscious of the covenant he had made with his friend, asked, “Is there yet anyone left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (2 Samuel 9:1).

One of Saul’s former slaves named Ziba identified Mephibosheth, saying, “There is still a son of Jonathan who is crippled in both feet” (2 Samuel 9:3). Either way, the fall resulted in a permanent disability to Mephibosheth, who for the rest of his life would be unable to walk normally or earn a living for himself.

It was not until David had finally defeated the Philistines and ascended to the throne without rivals that he inquired about Saul’s offspring. By then, evidently, some years had elapsed, and Mephibosheth was living “in the house of Machir the son of Ammiel in Lo-debar” (2 Samuel 9:4). Lo-debar was east of the Jordan, and it is very likely that Mephibosheth had gone into hiding there precisely because he had been afraid David would come after him.