The question this morning is not, do you believe in Jesus Christ, but does Christ believe in you? What do you answer to that? Have you ever been introduced to the Gospel’s revelation of a Christ who places unlimited confidence in unlikely people? Oh, the abundance of the gospel material which shows Jesus putting implicit faith in the most unpromising men and women! We talk so much in the church about the need for men to put their faith in Christ — well, have we ever begun to reckon with the New Testament record of Jesus’ faith in men, and begun to ask ourselves what significance this confidence of Christ in unlikely men and women has for us?

There was that embarrassing episode when the righteous, solid citizens of Jerusalem dragged before Jesus a poor wretch caught in the very act of adultery. They demanded that He pass judgment on her. The Law of Moses was clear in its penalty. She should be stoned to death. But Jesus lowered His head and while idly scribbling in the sand softly said: “Let him who is himself without sin cast the first stone at her.” And while conscience rose to smite each in his own breast, and the woman’s accusers one by one slipped silently away, Jesus whispered to the poor, disgraced and disgraceful wretch: “Go, and sin no more.” What amazing confidence — almost foolhardy, we might say, to turn the sinner loose in the hope that she would sin no more. Yet Jesus did it, for such was His unbelievable confidence in unpromising people.

Then there was Zachaeus, the Publican, a renegade to his own people. For the price of a comfortable living he sold his soul to the hated Roman rulers and collected their exorbitant taxes from his own race and countrymen. Cordially hated by the whole town was Zachaeus, yet when Jesus found him, He saw, in that unlikely, despised little man, something that merited His hope and His confidence. Jesus spent half the day with Zachaeus and on leaving said: “This day is salvation come to this house.”

And there were those twelve disciples Jesus singled out to be His close associates. Those men, of all people! Matthew, whom he picked up at the tax collection office, because of his former occupation already had three strikes against him with any Jewish group; and there were James and John, those brothers with hair trigger tempers, ready to blow their tops the minute things didn’t work out to suit them; and Thomas, nursing his doubts and never quite convinced about the fundamental issues, and so, hesitant and bumbling; and there was Judas, with his greed; and Peter, the blustering braggadocio, who in the pinch so often failed. Yet, these men Jesus chose, and despite all their unlikeness for dependability, put massive confidence in them and appointed them to be the founders of His church, indeed, made no other plans to safeguard His divine mission should it turn out that they were not worthy of His confidence.

Why was Jesus so confident in unpromising people? How can we account for His amazing optimism about human nature? Was He naïve — just a foolish idealist? Was He merely inexperienced and after the cross, when those rough men vented their spleen of cruelty and hate and coarse ribald jesting on him — would He have changed His view? I think not. Bleeding and dying, He sighed as almost His last petition: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do?” And so He died — confident to the end that there was something worthwhile in the most unpromising of men. But how do you explain this amazing confidence in all sorts of strange and unlikely people?

Well, for one thing, Jesus placed confidence in all sorts of unlikely people because He could see in every man the divine possibilities of the Kingdom of God. It is our sin, our perversion, our limited view, which prompts us to hand out the fake verdict on any human being: “He’s no good — unfit — unworthy — rotten to the core.” Jesus saw each man with the very eyes of God. He accepted the biblical view of man — as God’s child created in the image of God, no matter how dwarfed or broken or spoiled that image might be. Jesus was always seeing men and women, not in terms of their contemporary unfitness, or mis-placedness, due to the sins and perversions of a lost world, but in terms of their divine possibilities. Jesus said to plain fisherman: “Come after me and I will make you fishers of men . . . The Kingdom of God is within you.” The Lord of life saw beneath their surface commonplace abilities to their amazing possibilities and, therefore, He placed great confidence in them.

But more than that, I believe Jesus let unlikely men and women know how much He believed in them because He knows our deep human need for someone to have confidence in us or we perish. Jesus came to save the lost and the lonely and the last and the most unlikely, and the way His saving usually began was with just letting some poor beaten soul know that He believed in him.

That woman taken in adultery knew her guilt and unworthiness. There was no need in her accusers condemning her. She was already condemning herself in her own conscience. And the poorest way in all the world to reform one is by visiting with blame. Jesus knew a better way to reform. Jesus knew what this poor creature needed most was someone to believe in her. So He opens the gates of new life to her as He says: “Go, and sin no more. I’m counting on you.” Perhaps it was the first time anyone had ever expected anything other than the worst from her.

How do you think poor, unstable, vacillating Simon ever overcame his instability? The gospel tells us plainly. Why Jesus had confidence in him and told Peter that He believed one day that this incipient, good quality would become basic for his whole nature.

Do you know how the Salvation Army’s mighty rescue work began? It’s founder, a Methodist minister, just took seriously Jesus’ example and teaching and hazarded his profession and his life on the conviction that no outcast of society is beyond the pale of hope, be he drunkard, murderer, thief — if the poor castaway can only be shown and convinced that some one person cares whether he goes up or down.

Do you know what is the finest gift you could ever give anyone in this life? Some of us have fairly had our breath taken away with the wonder of expensive, unexpected, unmerited gifts — great big, much too big for us ever to have hoped for and we’ve been terribly excited about it. But do you know what is the very biggest, grandest gift you can ever give or receive in this life? I’ll tell you simply — just this — the genuine confidence of one true soul placed in another. The biggest thing you can do for anyone in this life is to believe in him — have confidence in him and let him know it. Parents, all that you may or may not do for your children in educational opportunities or legacies and estates and gifts can never take the place of, or equal in importance, this one supreme thing you can do for your child: let him know that you are counting on him — that you have great hopes and expectations for him. That will make him more of a man than could be possible in any other way.

And oh, if you would just read your gospel with believing eyes! If you would only open your heart to the love and implicit confidence Christ has in you — how it would liberate you and thrust you forth and make something great of you. Christ’s confidence in unlikely human nature is one of His wonderful ways of bringing His saving power to meet our deepest needs.

Finally, Christ places His amazing confidence in what might appear to us to be the most unlikely folks because only those will have confidence in Him. Even Jesus couldn’t do much with self-sufficient, proud, haughty, human nature. He came to found a Kingdom. He must be about His Father’s business. Men He must have. But the high and mighty He found occupied with other pressing concerns. The religious already had their prescribed ritual and routine. He came to His own and His own received Him not. They had no time or place for Him. But His Father’s Kingdom must come, so He turned to those the world counted unlikely contenders for greatness, and of them and through them wrought the Kingdom of God on earth.

Do you remember that woman by the well in Samaria with whom Jesus fell into conversation while the disciples went to a nearby village to fetch food? She was a Samaritan and a woman of bad reputation, even among the Samaritans, yet when she showed an interest in the coming Messiah, Jesus said to her: “I that speak unto you am He (the Messiah).” He had not made such a statement even to the disciples.

“It was a clearer revelation of Himself than He had as yet granted anyone. And it was made to one faded failure of a soul! But then all history is full of instances of how Christ often feels that He can trust himself farther to some most unlikely looking people than He can to the mass of us. (Why? Because they are more ready to trust Him, have confidence in Him, than the self-sufficient.) There was once a giddy headed youth, a man about town, playing the fool, likely to go straight to the devil, you and I would have said. But Christ, looking at him felt that He could trust him, and gave him such knowledge of himself that he became Francis of Assissi. Or He looked at the brutal captain of a villainous slave ship, of all people! ‘I can open my heart to this man,’ He felt, and did so in such a measure that John Newton, in his experience and in his preaching, and in his hymns, waded far farther into the depths of the gospel than most of us can.” (A. J. Gossip — Interpreters Bible)

What does this mean for us? You may think yourself a very unlikely candidate for enthusiastic churchmanship. Perhaps you’ve been living in the foothills of religion — way out on the frontiers of faith. Occasionally, you’ve come to church or wistfully thought: “Some folks get something out of their religion — why can’t I?” But only half-believing that anything could happen to stir your soul; from afar you’ve looked longingly up to the peaks of the spirit and just sighed hopelessly. Well, if that’s you, and the gospel record means anything, clearly it’s this — you are not far from the Kingdom. Christ has confidence in you.

Far too many of us are so saturated in our self-confidence — so pleased with our own personal triumphs, that we put no real confidence in Christ, and then He cannot match His with ours. For we must remember this — that all Christ’s confidence in us goes for naught unless we meet it with the response of faith and complete commitment. He is the vine, we are the branches. Only as we remain in Him and He in us, do we receive the divine power and love and life. Christ’s confidence in us is validated only if and when we confide in Him and there is complete unity of confidence. Christ has no confidence in our beautiful performance under our own power, following our own wild-wind wills. Christ’s confidence in us is based on the condition that we become His disciples and take Him completely as our Lord.

“There are plenty to follow the Lord halfway,” said Meister Eckhart, “but not the other half. They will give up possessions, friends, honors, but it touches too closely to give up themselves.”

“The voice of Jesus to every man is, ‘Go, and sin no more.’ (It is the voice of confident assurance of the amazing possibilities for every man and woman who is a new creature in Christ.) Christ came into the world that He might make an everlasting end of sin. He is the sinners’ only Savior. ‘This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’ He not only bids us sin no more, but He helps us to conquer every temptation. Not only does He bid us rise to heaven, but He puts forth His hand and gives us the very power He bids us employ.” (Joseph Parker)