Text: Mark 2:13-16 (ESV) - '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.”'

Romans 3:10 tells us no one is righteous, not even one. But Jesus tells the Pharisees he didn't come to call the righteous, those who are well have no need of a physician.

So what is Jesus getting at? Jesus was saying in effect, “To people who think they are righteous, I have nothing to say. But to those who know they have need, I have come!”

Kent Hughes writes, "Those who say, 'I have no need'--who say, 'There is no significant sin in me'--are beyond our help. All we can do is wait. Sooner or later life will go sour, and their dreams will collapse at their feet. Then they will know their need. That is why God so often allows trouble to come to men's and women's lives: to strip away the terrible delusion that they can make it by themselves and thus to open them to grace."

This morning, I received a call at the church from an old high school friend who I haven't seen or talked to for over 20 years. He recently had major back surgery and currently is homebound as he recovers. He watched our service yesterday and wanted to reconnect and tell me all that Jesus has done in his life! This man conveyed his life story to me--years of drug and alcohol abuse, living "wide open," nearly killing himself several times and a bar fight which resulted in the death of a man who picked a fight with him. He said, "God has a way of getting your attention." He reported how he turned his life over to Jesus several months ago and passionately desires to follow Jesus with the rest of his life! He was amazed by grace!

You may be thinking, "Yes, he needed grace because he was such a bad person." But you are equally in need of grace. And so am I.  Paul Tripp writes, "Hear this, if you would live on earth for another ten-thousand years, and you would continue to follow Christ, you would need His grace that next day as much as you needed it the first day that you believed."

Why does a Christian still need grace? If we've already received the gift of salvation Jesus purchased for us with His blood on the cross, why continue to need grace?

Because of Pride.

This is the good news of grace: Our sin is so heinous and such an affront to a holy God that nothing short of His very Son could satisfy the wrath of God. Only Jesus could provide us the righteousness necessary to restore our broken relationship with our Creator. Only because of grace, God is for us and not against us! This is amazing grace! We can stand before God just as we are, without fear, because of grace! Because of Jesus, we are fully accepted!

When we forget God's amazing grace, we begin to live in arrogance. We allow our own "importance" to overshadow God. We forget that everything we are is a gift from above. We can't praise and glorify God when we forget that grace not only gives us right standing before God, but it brings about our sanctification (Titus 2:11-13).

• Read and meditate on 1 Timothy 1:12-20.

"The gospel cannot be preached and heard enough, for it cannot be grasped well enough."  --Martin Luther