boots

Yes, Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors. The religious elites of His day were furious about it. But look at what actually happened at those tables. In Luke 5, Jesus walks up to Levi, a tax collector sitting at his booth, and says two words. "Follow me." Levi left everything, got up and followed Him. Then he threw a feast and invited all his tax collector friends to meet Jesus. When the Pharisees complained, Jesus didn't tell them those men were fine just the way they were. He said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Repentance. That was the point of the meal. Same with Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Jesus invites Himself to dinner at the house of a man everyone in Jericho knew was a crook. By the end of the visit, Zacchaeus is giving half his wealth to the poor and paying back four times what he cheated people out of. Jesus didn't affirm Zacchaeus the tax collector. He saved Zacchaeus and made him a new man. That's the pattern every single time. Jesus met people exactly where they were. He never left them there. Today we're told the loving thing is to affirm whatever identity a person chooses for himself. Celebrate it. Never question it. Call anything else hate. That isn't the Jesus of the Bible. That's a Jesus invented to make people comfortable. The real Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." Deny himself. Not affirm himself. The love of Christ is real, and it's bigger than anything you've done. But it's a love that refuses to leave you the way it found you. That's not intolerance. That's the Gospel.