1 Timothy 1:15
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Just as there has never been a shortage of opinion about who Jesus was (liar, nut, prophet, space alien, guru, ideal business manager, first Marxist), so there has never been a shortage of opinions about what he came to do. Ideologues see in him something to fit their particular ideology. He came (they say) to heighten consciousness, or affirm the proletariat, or show us that sickness is unreal, or defend private property, or do any one of a million things. But he himself and those he chose to bear witness to him always keep saying the same thing: he came to save sinners. Which is to say, he came to save you and me. He did not come to affirm us in our okayness. He came to rescue us from the disastrous pit into which the human race fall in the dawn of time. That offends people now as it did in his own day (just look at how his story ended). But if remains true now as then. Christ came to save. Us. You. Me. From our sins.
