As the American theologian Walter Wink puts it, “Holiness [not sin] becomes contagious in Jesus’ ministry.” Jesus demonstrates that, far from being something brittle that needs to be protected, true holiness is God’s robust cleansing and including agent. Instead of Jesus’ holiness driving him into isolation, it compels him to get out on the streets and into the homes of ordinary people considered by the religious elite to be outcasts and “sinners.” And it is this action that transforms their lives.
Steve Chalke, The Lost Message of Jesus, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), p. 89.
