Motivations and Following Jesus

Luke 19:5-7  "When Jesus reached the spot, He looked up and said to him, 'Zacchaeus, come down immediately.  I must stay at your house today.'  So he came down at once and welcomed Him gladly.  All the people saw this and began to mutter, 'He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.' "

I can see two reasons why most of us would not have done what Jesus did here.  First, we would have made it a point to steer clear of sinners, because of the "wisdom" which tells us to protect ourselves by closely guarding who we associate with.  While there is certainly a time and a place to be on our guard and recognize that we are vulnerable to negative influence, most of us carry this WAY too far and use it as an excuse to not associate with people who look different, act different, have different views, etc.  We are most certainly at risk of being drawn into sin in certain situations, but self-protection is not the path Jesus modeled for us.

Second, we may have considered showing grace and mercy to Zacchaeus right up until the point that the "in crowd" started to speak negatively of us.  I'm afraid there would be at least a tinge of desire and motivation on our part to show grace and mercy only as a means of looking good to others.  When we realized that our actions would not accomplish that goal, and that the opposite image was what others were gossiping about, would we have stuck with it?

Two common motivations, both driven by selfishness, keep up from following Jesus' example.