The Invitation Goes Out to the “Bad” As Well As the “Good”

“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready… Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good.” Matthew 22:8–10

Who is a good person?

That sounds like an easy question until you try to answer it. Someone may do many good things but also some terrible ones. Someone with a bad reputation may unexpectedly show kindness. Where exactly is the line between “good” and “bad”? And whose measuring stick are we using? Opinions on what makes a good person can be wildly different.

In Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet, the servants do not stop to figure it out. They simply invite everyone they find, “the bad as well as the good.”

Those labels describe how people appear to others. But before God, the supposedly “good” . . . . need the invitation every bit as much as the obviously “bad.” No one earns a place at the King’s banquet by having a better record. The invitation rests entirely on the King’s grace.

Later in the parable, one guest is found without a wedding garment. The problem is not that he had been too sinful to receive the invitation. The invitation had gone out freely. The tragedy is rejecting the gift by which the King prepares sinners to belong there. We come clothed not in our goodness, but in Christ, trusting his forgiveness and righteousness.

When we invite, we don’t need to examine someone’s life first. We don’t need to decide whether they are worthy enough, respectable enough, or ready enough. The King just says, “Invite anyone you find.” So we do.