What kind of people did Jesus mainly sped time with during His ministry? They were people whom society regarded as sinners.

The idea of a “sinner” at that time was somewhat different from what we mean by the word today. In those days, “sinners” were regarded as people rejected by God, and because they were rejected by God, they were also considered unclean people who could not bear the holiness of God. People believed that this uncleanness could spread to others. If you stayed close to a sinner, you too would become unclean. It was almost like the way people think about a contagious disease today. So when Jesus continually associated with sinners, it was as though He Himself was seen as a sinner. People criticized Him in this way and looked down on Him.

In fact, the way Jesus lived was very different from the way religious leaders generally lived at that time. People felt that religious leaders were closer to God, and so they followed them in order to know God. But Jesus, even as He revealed God to people, associated with sinners.

He also spent time with tax collectors. In those days, tax collectors were like collaborators who sided with the ruling power that oppressed their own people and exploited their fellow countrymen. Jerusalem was under Roman rule, and tax collectors worked for Rome, collecting taxes from their own people and handing them over to the Roman authorities. They were seen as people who gained favor with the ruling class while living off the suffering of their own people. They may have done it to make a living, but in the eyes of their fellow countrymen, they were traitors who had sold out their own nation. So they were hardly treated as decent human beings. Because they were protected by Rome, people could not easily lay hands on them, but behind their backs they would whisper, “Those people have been abandoned by God. They are cursed.” It was the kind of atmosphere where people could spit at them or curse them as they passed by and even feel righteous for doing so.

And yet Jesus went around with people like that. Naturally, people must have looked at Him strangely. They may have thought, “What this man Jesus says sounds reasonable enough, but why does He keep going around with people like that?” Jesus was always surrounded by sinners—even prostitutes, people whom anyone would regard as sinners—and also by the sick. People may have looked at the whole scene and thought it was miserable and disgraceful.

But Jesus said to such people, “Who needs a physician? Is it the healthy who need one, or the sick? I did not come to save the righteous. I came to save sinners. It is sinners who need Me.”

Jesus came to save sinners. Just as a doctor comes to heal the sick, Jesus came to save sinners. Therefore, if we are to meet God and believe in Jesus, whom God sent, as our Savior, we must first become sinners.

I lived most of my life without believing in God. When I was young, my grandmother even had my name placed at a Buddhist temple and prayed there for me. Whenever school forms asked for my religion, I wrote “Buddhism.” I had only been to a temple a few times as a child, but Buddhism was the religion of my family.

I also had a lot of negative feelings about Christianity. I was probably influenced by society around me. As I grew older, I read books that criticized Christianity, and at one point I even thought, “The world will only have peace when Christianity disappears.” I believed that God did not exist and that people had simply invented Him. When Christians tried to share the gospel with me, I would use the little theological knowledge I had picked up from books to make fun of them. If they could not answer me well, I felt proud of myself and thought, “They really don’t know much.” I did not believe at all that God was alive. I was full of my own righteousness.

And yet, deep inside, I longed for something eternal. I wanted to be loved, but when I thought about it, I did not want someone to love me for only ten years. I wanted to be loved forever. I knew no human being could love me forever, and yet my heart still wanted eternal love. It was the same with happiness. I did not want to be happy for just ten years. I wanted happiness that would last forever.

So I began to wonder, “What is it inside me that longs so deeply for something eternal?” It certainly was not my stomach. My stomach is easy to satisfy. One bowl of jjamppong, and it is happy. But there was something in me that could not be satisfied so easily. It kept searching for eternal love, eternal meaning, and eternal value. So I began asking myself, “Where did I come from? Where am I going? When I die, is that really the end? And if it is, why do I keep longing for something eternal?” I wrestled with those questions and wandered for a long time.

Some people sincerely told me that God was alive, but I did not want to accept what they said. I thought, “That is your religion. Why should I listen to it?” To me, all religions seemed basically the same. Buddhists said they had the truth. Christians said they were right. Muslims said the same thing. I thought they were all simply claiming that their own religion was true and that they themselves were right.

But later, I met God. I did not simply come to believe in God. I met Him. I experienced Him. And now, I testify about Him.

The “God” we speak of is a god. Among the many gods in this world, I met this God. If I say, “I met a god,” people may ask, “What kind of god did you meet?” That is a fair question, because there are many gods in this world. You may think you are living without believing in any god, but there are many gods around you, and your life is being influenced by them.

You are living close to some kind of god. If until now you have not known God and have denied Jesus, that does not mean you have lived without any god. It means you have been close to gods that are enemies of God, gods that have no fellowship with Him. Even the strange troubles in your life or problems with your health may have come because such gods were around you. Your life changes depending on what kind of god you stay close to and have fellowship with. If you stay close to a clean god, you become clean. If you stay close to a spirit of drunkenness, you become a heavy drinker. If you stay close to a violent spirit, you become violent. If you stay close to a sick spirit, you become sick.

Then people ask, “What kind of god did you meet?” There are many ways I could describe the God we have met—the God I have met, the God many saints here have met, the God we Christians have met. I could say He is a God full of love and rich in mercy. I could say He is the God who created heaven and earth. I could also say He exists by Himself and who created all other gods.

But simply knowing these things does not mean that you have a relationship with Him. What is the faith that enables us to believe in Jesus and enter into a deep relationship with Him?

Two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus was crucified and died. But God raised Him from among the dead. People do not rise from the dead. Yet the God we believe in is the God who raised Jesus. So what we believe is this: Jesus rose from the dead. A dead man came back to life. That may be hard to believe. But He did rise, and there were many witnesses. How did He rise? A God raised Him. And that God is the very One we now believe in, serve, and call our Father.

Then how can we meet this God? You may say, “You are a Christian, so of course you believe in Him. But what about everyone else?” Yet God has opened a way that leaves us without excuse. No other god in this world tells you, “You are a sinner.” But the God I met—the God who raised Jesus from the dead—told me who I was. He told me that I was a sinner. I could not accept that, and that was why I could not meet Him. But everything began to change when I confessed, “I am a sinner.” When I said, “You are right. I am a sinner,” the way opened for me to meet God. You could study all you want and even find scientific evidence that Noah’s ark really existed, but that alone would not enable you to believe in or know this God. You could investigate whether the Garden of Eden really existed, but that would not enable you to meet or know Him either. What is the first door to meeting and knowing this God? It is admitting that you are a sinner.

I hated admitting this because I believed I was a righteous person. I studied social work, which is basically about learning how to help others. I chose that field because I wanted to help people. I wanted to be a good person and live a decent life, and I actually did that kind of work. I thought I was righteous. But as the years passed and I gained more experience in life, I realized, “Doing good and helping others does not make me righteous.” God was the only One who showed me this. The kind of righteousness God looks for in us is not simply doing good deeds. Before God, we are all sinners. We are sinners who do not deserve to receive His blessings and do not deserve His love.

Jesus said that although there are many unclean things in this world, what truly defiles a person does not come from outside. It is not something like a virus entering the body that makes a person unclean. What defiles a person comes from within the heart, and that is what destroys a person. Lies, deceit, murder, adultery, theft—these things come out of the human heart and defile us. When a person admits this and says, “I am a sinner. Without God’s grace, I cannot truly live or have eternal life. And if heaven and hell are real, then I deserve to go to hell,” God opens the way for that person to meet Him.

When you first come to church, you may think, “I will take a good look at this church and then decide whether I want to keep coming.” That is understandable. But the most important thing is not whether you attend a church. You must meet God. And to meet God, the important question is not, “What is this church like?” but, “Who am I?” The first step is to admit that you are a sinner, a serious sinner before God, and that if heaven and hell are real, you are a sinner who deserves to go to hell. Once you admit that, everything else begins to open.

So when I wanted to meet God, I prayed like this: “God, if You are alive, please meet me. I admit that I am a sinner, just as You say. If heaven and hell are real, then I am someone who deserves to go to hell. If there are blessings and curses, then I deserve to be cursed. But I want to live. I want to have life. I want to go to heaven. God, if You are alive, please meet me. I have heard many times that You sent Your Son and that He paid the price for all my sins. I cannot believe it. But if it is true, please meet me. I do not know whether You really sent Your Son. How could I know whether Your Son really shed His blood? But there is one thing I do know. I agree with Your word. I am a sinner.” This is something we can admit and know for ourselves. This is where it all begins.

And this is the basis on which God can hold people responsible. He has clearly said that we are sinners. If we keep insisting that we are not, then we are refusing to agree with God. But if we agree with what God has said—“You are a sinner”—then we can experience the hand of salvation that God has reached out to us.

God does more than save us. He treats us as He would treat God Himself. He has made us like God. Before I believed in Jesus, I did not know this. I only wanted to be saved. But after believing in Jesus, I came to understand something amazing: every person who believes in Jesus becomes like God. And this did not remain merely an idea. Just as Jesus promised, remarkable things began to happen through me.

At the end of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, “He who believes—that is, he who believes and is baptized—will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned. And signs will follow those who believe. In My name they will cast out demons. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover. They will speak with new tongues.” In other words, they will speak in a new language. He also promised, “If they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them.”

And in fact, after I received the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, I began to speak in tongues. It is not a language of this world. My spirit speaks mysteries to God. It is not a human language. After I believed in Jesus, I began to speak this way.

Jesus also said that believers would cast out demons in His name, and I actually began to cast out demons. As this happened more and more, it became very natural to me, and I also began to heal the sick. At first, it was things like colds, back pain, arm pain, and headaches. But as I continued, even people who were blind or paralyzed were healed on the spot. These things still happen today. They happen just as they are recorded in the Bible. You may say, “How could things like that really happen?” They do not appear to those who do not believe, but those who believe experience them. I myself have experienced healing. Sungrak Church in particular became very well known among churches in Korea for the power of healing. We taught that this power was not given only to one special person, but to all believers. In fact, many of our church members exercised this power, and many pastors came from among them.

In this way, the words of Jesus are fulfilled. And among those words is this promise: “If they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them.”

A virus is spreading these days, and what you are hearing through the media is actually only a small part of what is happening. Because I am involved in missions in China, I knew about the situation there early on and had been watching videos from there. Rumors began spreading in China around November of last year. Taxi drivers were saying things like, “Do not go to that neighborhood. SARS is spreading there.” That was around the middle of November. Then December passed, and by the middle of January, about two months later, deaths began occurring one after another. Until then, people in China had not taken it very seriously. But two months later, people with no apparent connection to one another were collapsing in different places. Unlike Korea, it was difficult to trace how they had become infected, which meant the virus had already spread widely. So many people were dying that the situation was becoming very difficult to control.

The greater problem in a situation like this is that people fall into panic. They become filled with fear. You never know when you might unknowingly come into contact with someone who is infected, or when you might meet someone carrying the virus. And because people can spread it without showing symptoms, the fear becomes even greater. That is why people began wearing masks, imposing restrictions, and locking down entire cities. There were so many bodies that crematoriums had to keep running, and even dozens of crematoriums were said to be insufficient. In Wuhan, mobile cremation equipment was even brought in. Reports also said that so much sulfur dioxide was being released that it could be detected by satellite, and that the Chinese government quickly brought in new facilities to handle the situation. At that time, the number of cases was still continuing to rise. Hearing things like this, how could people not be afraid?

And yet, even hearing these things, I as a Christian—and many other Christians as well—have peace. There are Berea churches in that city that have been receiving teaching from us, and they also have peace. Some people there have actually been infected. Of course, when people know that infection could lead to death, they become afraid. But Christians can still be bold because they hold on to the word, “If they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them.” Not even one bird falls to the ground without God’s permission. How much more valuable are we than birds? The lilies of the field are beautifully clothed. Would God not also provide clothing for people? Sparrows do not work to produce food, yet they do not starve to death. How much more would God care for His children, those who possess His glory? This is why we can be bold.

Suppose, in the worst case, that we unexpectedly leave this world. Then what happens? People in the world struggle desperately because they are afraid of death, but we know what comes after death. The soul goes to Paradise and later rises again in the resurrection. What kind of God do we believe in? He is the God who raised Jesus from the dead. That is why those of us who believe in Jesus are not fundamentally afraid of death. That is why we have peace.

Those who believe in Jesus have this peace, but those who do not believe can become so overwhelmed by fear that they do terrible things. One grandfather killed his eight-year-old grandson because the child kept going in and out of the house, and he was afraid the boy might become infected. Some people, terrified of infection, jumped from buildings or took their own lives. Others went around spitting on elevator doors and handles because they thought, “If I am going to die, then you should not live either.” When people are driven into a corner by fear, thoughts like these can arise.

How would the government respond to a situation like this? Socialism basically puts society first. It sees society as one whole organism, one living body, so what matters most is the survival of society itself. An even more extreme form of this can be seen in North Korea, in what is called Juche ideology. Some scholars even describe it as a kind of religion. Juche sees the whole society of North Korea as one living body. In that view, each individual is only a single cell.

Then what happens when a cell is infected by a virus? You simply remove that cell. You cut it off. So in this kind of totalitarian society, when someone becomes infected with a disease, the first priority is not to treat that person. The first priority is to isolate that person so the disease will not spread to the whole society. In China, for example, people’s temperatures were checked on the streets. If someone suddenly tested at 38 degrees Celsius, that person could be taken away immediately and put into quarantine. But where would they be quarantined? Proper isolation requires a special negative-pressure room so that germs cannot escape outside. Instead, people were sometimes placed together in temporary facilities holding thousands of patients. Once someone was suspected, whether that person was actually infected or not, he could be placed there. And once inside, what would happen? Even a healthy person could become infected. Someone who simply had a fever from a cold could be taken there and end up catching the virus. At the time, the reported death rate was around two percent, though many believed the actual rate was higher. Many people were dying. They went in through the front gate and came out through the back. It was a truly frightening situation.

What does this show about that kind of society? The individual person is not what matters most. What matters is isolating one person in order to protect the whole. It does not even matter whether that person was actually sick. If there is a possibility, the person must be isolated quickly. From our point of view, this can look extremely inhumane. But in socialist countries such as North Korea or China, such things can happen.

Now imagine if our God treated human beings this way. God is great. He is God, and human beings are only His creatures, so He could treat us that way if He chose. Suppose there were one hundred people. Then one person would seem to have only one-hundredth of the value of the whole. From a socialist or totalitarian way of thinking, losing that one person would not seem like such a great loss, because ninety-nine would still remain. And if going after that one person might put the other ninety-nine at risk, you would not go looking for the one who was lost. That is the way people think.

But our God tells us to think about the heart of a shepherd. Suppose a shepherd takes out one hundred sheep and then realizes that one is missing. He leaves the ninety-nine and goes to look for that one sheep. The heart of a shepherd is like the heart of a mother. He does not say, “I still have ninety-nine, so that is enough.” He treasures each and every sheep. And when he finds the one that was lost, he is so happy that it almost seems as though he rejoices more over that one than over the ninety-nine. He never held a celebration simply because the ninety-nine were there, but when the lost sheep is found, he celebrates.

In the same way, before our God, there is greater joy over one sinner who repents and returns to Him than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. God does not take His happiness and glory and give it to society as a whole, saying, “Share this among yourselves.” He gives what is precious to Him to each individual person.

But God is different from us. If we give something to one person, we may no longer be able to give the same thing to someone else. But God can give one person 100, and then give another person 100 as well. With each one of us, God relates to us as “I and you,” not as “I and they.” He treats each person as though there were no one else in the world but God and that one person. So He pours His glory, authority, and power upon each individual and treats that person as He would treat God Himself.

People who came to know even a little about this God served Him over many generations, and the societies they built developed in places such as Britain and Europe, and later in America as well. The way people lived in those societies was different from the way people lived in societies that had been less influenced by God. In one kind of society, when someone became sick, the main concern was to isolate or remove that person so the illness would not spread to the whole. But in the other, when one person became sick, the important thing was to treat and care for that person. This is because God Himself is that kind of God.

Do you know what happens now in China when a dog is seen wandering on the street? In areas under lockdown, dogs found roaming outside are sometimes beaten to death because they too can carry things from place to place. They do not die from a single blow, so they may be beaten again and again. It is terrible.

But would things be done that way in the kingdom of God? Would people influenced by the kingdom of God treat life that way? They even care for injured dogs. I used to find it hard to understand when I saw some Americans come to Korea and adopt orphans. There are many families with adopted children. Among people I know, it is not unusual for a family with five children to have three biological children and two adopted children. And what surprised me even more was this: when they came to Korea to adopt, instead of choosing only healthy and attractive children, they would sometimes take children who were blind or unable to speak. Later, some of those children grew up to earn doctorates and become professors.

When I traveled through rural areas in China for missions, I saw many tragic cases. If a child was born with a disability, the child might simply be abandoned. Under the one-child policy, if that one child had a disability, there were even cases where the child was buried and left to die. Yet there were people in the West who would take in children like that and raise them. And think about dogs. So many dogs are abandoned. If even people with disabilities are not treated with dignity, how much less would a disabled dog be valued? Yet some Americans have come to Korea and adopted disabled dogs. They would take a dog that could not use its hind legs, give it a wheelchair, and bring it home. A dog that had once lived here in misery could then run around on the grass.

Where does this respect for life, this love for life, come from? It comes from God. Human beings do not naturally have this in themselves. These qualities appear in cultures shaped by people who have received the love of God, because this is what God Himself is like. There is a saying, “Like father, like son.” The God we believe in—the God who raised Jesus from the dead—is a God like this, and that is why people influenced by Him develop a culture that values life in this way. In Africa, there is a religion called voodoo, often associated with making dolls and piercing them with needles in order to harm or even kill someone. Look at what happens: people come to resemble the god they follow.

What kind of god do you want to stay close to? If you stay close to a god full of lies, you will become false as well. If you stay close to a cursed god, that curse will come upon you. But if you stay close to a prosperous god, you will prosper. If you stay close to a god full of life, you will be filled with life. If you stay close to a god full of love, you will be filled with love. Meet this God—the God who raised Jesus from the dead, the God who desires to save sinners even at such a cost.

And there is only one thing you can do in order to meet Him. Everything else must be done by Him. What you can do is admit, “I am a sinner.” You are not a sinner before me. You may not be a sinner before the nation either. But before God, you are a sinner. Admit that. God must move your heart so that you can believe in Him. You cannot make yourself believe. No matter how many times you hear that Jesus is the Son of God, that alone will not make you believe it. It may even sound crazy to you. But when the Holy Spirit of God works in you, suddenly you can believe. For that to happen, there is something you must do. What is it? Say, “I am a sinner. Please save me.”

In the name of Jesus, I bless you that you may truly meet Jesus—the Physician and Savior who came to call sinners.

Father God, You sent Your Son to give us life and did such a great work for us, though we are so weak. Please help each and every one of us to receive this great love for ourselves. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.