When I was in college, I had an older cousin named Todd. He worked for a famous guitar company, and he had procured for me my first “real” guitar. Todd was a Christian, like me. But he was pretty edgy, and he said things that sometimes made me uncomfortable and made me challenge my views.

He had walked a hard path and made many mistakes, but he was now enjoying the forgiveness and acceptance that comes with knowing Jesus. That was a good thing for me to see and to think about, so when I was back in my hometown, I would usually go and visit Todd.

One day, I was at his house visiting, and we were playing guitar together and talking about music. He pulled out the guitar he was going to play from the mountain of guitars in his workshop, and it was a beautiful acoustic guitar that had “Jesus is for LOSERS” written with a permanent marker on the face.

My first response was probably like yours when you first read the title of this post: Shock, indignation, outrage. But why?

Truthfully, it’s because we like to think of ourselves more highly than we should. We want to believe that we are not losers when the evidence of our lives proves otherwise. This was not a statement about Jesus’ value, but about ours!

Sure we may have won awards and been successful at our job. Maybe we won a championship or wrote a best-selling book. But when we level the playing field to the things that matter, we are all losers. And that is precisely what Jesus came to save us from, ourselves.

Because we have lied — to ourselves, to God, to our spouse, to our kids, etc.

We have cheated — on a test, in our accounting, in our career.

We have committed adultery — both physically and in our hearts.

We have committed murder — hating our neighbors, plotting their demise.

We have loved ourselves more than the God who created us.

We have indulged ourselves while the poor suffer around us.

So in the thing that matters (life), we have lost. We have tried but failed. We have sought life but found death because we loved ourselves more than God and our fellow man. But, Jesus came for us losers, to take us out of this hopeless life and give us purpose and identity in him.

• Jesus came for Zaccheus, who was wealthy but lost and consumed by greed.
• Jesus came for Simon the Zealot, who was consumed with political fervor but had never found the truth.
• Jesus came for Nicodemus, who was a religious leader but had no understanding of the things of God.
• Jesus came for the Samaritan woman, who was rejected by her peers and in bondage to her sin.
• Jesus came for the thief on the cross who always seemed to get caught but couldn’t stop stealing.
• Jesus came for the blind man who everyone ignored while he still maintained hope.

And Jesus came for you too.

“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:57–58 NIV)