Heavenly hospital

30 And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:30-32).

One of the ironies of life in a fallen world is that many people who have the greatest need to fear damnation are religiously hostile, indifferent, or presumptuous–while many people who fear damnation have the least need to fear it because they are pious to the point of painful scrupulosity. 

There is a grain of truth to fear of damnation within the church. There's the danger of dead formalism. Nominal, token piety. Likewise, the danger of spiritual presumption. We must guard against those spiritual pifalls. Too many people think they are too good to go to hell. 

On the other hand, biblical threats of eschatological punishment are directed, not at Christians who struggle with sin and self-doubt, but at insolent, defiant sinners–both inside and outside the covenant community. 

Just as there are people who assume they are too good to go to hell, there are Christians who can't shake the feeling that they just aren't good enough to go to heaven. They are too impure.

Christians of that disposition need to make a habit of reminding themselves, from day to day, that Christianity is a religion for the sick, not the sound. A religion for diseased souls. Becoming a Christian doesn't make us healthy. In this life, we undergo spiritual treatment rather than a cure. We are only healed in the world to come. As Christians, we are chronically ill. That continues right up to the deathbed. 

It's like patients who suffer from an illness that's treatable but incurable. Treatment provides a degree of symptom relief, and it may prevent the disease from becoming terminal, but the underlying illness remains. A maintenance program. We are under the lifelong care of our Physician. In this life we never cease to need Jesus as our Physician.