Genuine Friendship

I'm currently reading Pop Goes The Church, by Tim Stevens. Highly recommended read for everyone. Lots of good stuff so far. One of my favorite paragraphs comes from the Foreword by Ed Young. Here ya go:

"It is said of Jesus that he was a friend of sinners. That doesn't mean he tolerated them. That doesn't mean he took them on as an evangelistic project. It doesn't even mean he hung out with them out of pity. It means what it says. He was their friend. He cared about their needs, listened to their problems, and helped them in whatever situation to understand that God loved them - Jesus loved them. In fact, I might be making a stretch here (but I don't think so) in saying that he might have preferred hanging out with the sinners because there was no pretense or religious hypocrisy. His harshest criticism was not for the sinners but for the religious leaders of the day. He saw their rituals and legalism as oppressive, hypocritical, and extremely opposed to the spirit of the law. The law had become god and God had become (or seemed) irrelevant. Sound familiar? The law was meant to drive people into the loving embrace of the Father, not away from him."