And it came to pass, as he lay at table in the house, that behold, many tax-gatherers and sinners came and lay at table with Jesus and his disciples.
Matthew gives one quiet line: Jesus at a meal in a house. The other Gospels fill in what he left out — the home was his own, the feast was his own, and the guests were his old colleagues. The scene raises the question that offended the religious leaders: why does the Holy One sit down with such company?
Matthew wrote his own call and his own dinner, yet he removes himself from both. The other Gospel writers supply the details he passed over.
And this is very fine. It is Luke and Mark who tell us all the pleasant things that did Matthew such credit. No envy on their part kept his fellow apostles from recording them. But Matthew himself gives only the shortest, plainest account. Notice: he does not even say that it was his own house they sat in. Still less does he say that it was "a great feast" he was giving, to which he had invited all his old tax-collector friends. He is like Jacob, "a plain man." He is too honest and genuine a man to be ashamed of his old friends or of his new master.
The guest list was no accident. Matthew filled his table with the people he knew, and he had a reason.
He was indeed following the Lord, for he had invited a great company of tax-gatherers and sinners, no doubt in desire for their hearing the word of God.
"Tax collectors" carried a specific stigma. They worked for the occupying power, and people believed they took more than they should.
Tax collectors are, I think, nowhere very welcome visitors. In Matthew's time and country they collected the taxes for a foreign, conquering power. On top of that they "farmed" the taxes, squeezing out of the oppressed people, as was believed, far more than was right or wise. So as a class they were disliked twice over. The ancient Jew hated them and lumped them in with sinners — "tax collectors and sinners," as the common phrase went.
The contrast in the room is sharp. The Lord sits at the table; the men who kept their distance stand watching.
Here a company of tax collectors and sinners have come together. And He, the Holy One, the One who had come to seek and to save the lost, sits at the table with them and eats with them. Again we say, what a scene of grace! He who created the heavens and the earth now stands in the creature's place, in living touch with those who rebelled against Him! And there they stand, the poor, miserable, self-righteous Pharisees. Their religion was all about keeping the outside clean. They would not even touch a tax collector, much less speak to him. To sit down and eat with them would have been in their eyes an almost unpardonable crime.
One writer names the root of their objection.
This gives the Pharisees occasion to vent their unbelief: to them nothing is so offensive as grace, either in doctrine or in practice. Here they question and reproach His grace, when they see the Lord sitting at ease among tax collectors and sinners, who came and sat down with Him in Matthew's house.
Jesus did not choose this company because He found something promising in it. What He came to give, not what He found, shaped His path.
He goes and eats with tax collectors, having called Matthew who was one. It was not the outside which governed His path. God was there, and the work was to be the effect of His presence and grace, not dependent on what He found... He came not to find, but to bring what was needed.
Matthew paid for the meal, but the table belonged to his Master.
In a moment He turns from guest into host, as He did another time with the disciples walking to Emmaus. He makes Levi's feast His own. He answers the Pharisees: "Do not complain; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. I came, I spread the feast, not Levi." Levi had spread the feast, but he spread it in deep-hearted sympathy with the mind of His Master. Have you ever had in your house a table of which the Lord could say that He spread it, and not you?
That sympathy is the practical lesson drawn from the verse: a new follower whose guest list matches his Lord's heart.
The Lord has His joy in the whole-hearted and devoted disciple, and feasts with him, as He does with all His faithful ones; and Levi as the true disciple expresses the heart of His Lord to those around him, for he invites to his table not the righteous, but sinners, those whom Jesus came to call.
- Called. Jesus called a tax collector from his booth. His trade earned a double dislike: he served a foreign power, and people believed he overcharged his own.
- Given. The Lord did not come to find something good in that room. He came to bring what was needed. The outside did not govern His path.
- Shared. Matthew answered with a feast. He filled it with old colleagues, so they would hear the word of God from his new Master.
- Owned. Levi paid for the feast, but the Lord called it His own. The disciple spread it in sympathy with his Master's mind.
- Resented. Grace offended the self-righteous onlookers most of all. Matthew, telling his own story, kept his name out of it.
And the Pharisees seeing [it], said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax-gatherers and sinners?
At Matthew's table Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees object. Their complaint is not about a doctrine but about a guest list — and the answer it draws out shows why He came.
The guests at Matthew's table belonged to a class the whole nation despised. The hatred had reasons behind it.
Tax collectors are nowhere, I believe, very welcome visitors. In Matthew's time and country they collected the taxes for a foreign, conquering power. On top of that they "farmed" the taxes. People believed they squeezed far more out of the oppressed than was just or wise. So as a class they were doubly disliked. The ancient Jew hated them and lumped them in with sinners — "tax collectors and sinners" as the common phrase went.
For the Pharisees, eating with such men was close to unthinkable.
They were religious men, with their broad prayer boxes, careful to keep the outside clean. They would not even touch a tax collector, much less speak to him. To sit down and eat with them would have been in their eyes an almost unpardonable crime. And here they find Him eating with tax collectors and sinners. They had heard His words of divine authority. They had seen His deeds of almighty power. He had shown Himself to be Jehovah.
They do not put the charge to Jesus. They put it to His disciples.
When they saw Him eat with these outcasts, they speak, not to Jesus, but to His disciples. Only pride and mischief were in their hearts. But this effort to undermine Him with His followers, and so to shake them, only draws out from the Lord His own expression of grace, stronger and stronger.
The disciples never have to answer, and the feast is not spoiled.
Were these wretched fault-finders going to spoil the feast? The host had planned a joy for himself: to let all his invited guests hear words of power and blessing for the good of their souls. The Pharisees might look on and murmur. But the Lord at once took up the question and closed the mouths of those murmurers. He would not let the disciples be troubled because they could not answer it, nor let Matthew be disturbed by such an intrusion.
Matthew's feast is what set them off.
So Matthew, called at his tax office, follows Jesus and makes a feast for Him. That gives the Pharisees their chance to vent their unbelief. To them nothing is so offensive as grace, in teaching or in practice.
So who comes out worst in this scene?
In this scene, and all through this Gospel, Satan's masterpiece is not the poor, wicked, self-confessed thieves, the tax collectors and prostitutes. It is the proud, religious, self-righteous Pharisee.
His answer came in one short illustration.
The Lord settles the question with a simple illustration: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." Then He applies it: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." They insinuated that the Lord was associating with sinners. His reply is that He was "calling" sinners out of their things to follow Him. Grace to the sinner does not mean indifference to his sins.
Grace works on one basis only, and that basis wipes out the distinction the Pharisees lived by.
Christ brought in the light, and in it Pharisee and tax collector were alike exposed. Man hated that. Grace deals with all men on one common ground, that of being sinners. It levels their moral condition, and comes only to those who have need of it. This is what man cannot bear. He is always trying to make a difference between righteousness and unrighteousness in man, so that he himself may have a certain character before others.
There is a turn here the objectors missed.
The gracious Lord stooped to eat with the sinner. Had He done otherwise He would have cut off all ground of hope from the Pharisee. A Pharisee is, after all, a sinner, though he may scorn the term. The grace of Christ is his only hope. Yet he must say, "How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?" Far better to adore the grace that led Him to do so.
- Grace acted. Jesus sat down with the most despised class in the nation — not a lapse in standards, but His mission on display.
- Grace offended. What the Pharisees could not stomach was grace itself, in teaching and in practice.
- Grace challenged. They aimed the charge at His disciples, not at Him — and He answered in their place.
- Grace calls. Sitting with sinners was not indifference to sin; He was calling them out of it to follow Him.
- Grace levels. It treats all on one ground, as sinners — which is why it was the Pharisee's only hope too, had he seen it.