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.
But [Jesus] hearing it, said, They that are strong have not need of a physician, but those that are ill.
Jesus is eating at Matthew's house with tax collectors and people the religious leaders called "sinners," and the critics complain about it to His disciples, not to Him. His answer is a proverb about a doctor, and it shows who He came for and why His critics could not see their own need.
The complaint hit the disciples, but the Lord took it on Himself. One writer sees cowardice in the attack and a simple, satisfying reply. He also answers the charge hiding behind it: that grace goes easy on sin. And he notes something easy to miss — the Lord never says the sick people at that table knew they were sick.
Man never understands grace, and he accuses it, at least by implication, of being indifferent to sin. The truth is that self-righteousness covers sin, and it is always as spiteful as it is hypocritical, blaming its own evil on others, especially on grace. There is nothing so holy as grace, and nothing else treats sin as so very evil... They had not the honesty to complain to Jesus, but took out their anger on His disciples. But the Lord answers for His people. "Jesus answered them, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick'" — a simple but most satisfactory and impressive answer... Granted that they were sick; they were just the people for the physician. It is not even said that they were conscious of their sickness. At least God knows the need, and God seeks the needy, and Jesus was God Himself as man presented in grace.
In Matthew's account, this saying comes in a chapter that opens with a paralysed man forgiven and then healed. One commentator links the two through Psalm 103, where the Lord both forgives and heals.
In chapter 9 we have the same divine power in the midst of Israel, but the character of His mission still shines out. It is grace. He declares to the poor paralytic that his sins are forgiven him... He answers by exercising the power that Psalm 103 joins to forgiveness in the Lord's ways with Israel. He still takes the place of Son of man: "who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases." Forgiveness and healing — that was His mission, if they would receive Him, who had come in grace as a man.
Their own question exposed them. It showed why they had no interest in this Messiah, and one writer answers it with a question of his own.
Why was it that they failed to receive their Messiah? Because in their own estimation they did not need such a one as He. Why complain, then, that those who did feel their need of such a Saviour came to Him and found a welcome? What kind of physician refuses to treat anyone but the fit and healthy?
Refusing the diagnosis does not make a person well. Another writer turns the picture around. The confidence that keeps a man from the doctor is itself the worst symptom.
This self-righteousness of the flesh is its worst feature. The scribes and Pharisees were not cured, because they would not admit they were diseased. They felt no need of correction. This itself is disease in its most advanced and alarming state.
Sin leaves a person both damaged and guilty. Each side needs a different remedy, and both come from the same Person.
Man is here shown to be both diseased and criminal. As the former, he needs healing; as the latter, he needs pardon. The Son of God is both Physician and Saviour, and beside Him there is no other.
If only the sick get the doctor, then the one thing that keeps a person out is imagining he is well. One writer answers those who feel too unworthy to come.
Some poor souls object, "I feel unworthy, so I hold back from going to Christ for relief." Who did Christ shed His blood for, if not the unworthy? "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Christ came into the world as into a hospital, among a company of crippled, bedridden souls. Who was ever saved because he was worthy?... Free grace pitied and healed them; God does not find us worthy, but makes us worthy. If we never come to Christ to be healed until we are worthy, we must never come.
- Diagnosis. Two groups sat in that room: those who knew they were sick and those who only thought they were well. Both were ill; only one group got the Physician.
- Denial. Self-righteousness is not the absence of disease. It is the last stage of it: the patient refuses treatment because he will not admit anything is wrong.
- Double cure. Sin makes us both diseased and guilty. We need healing and pardon, and Christ is both Physician and Saviour.
- Defence. The critics aimed their complaint at His disciples, but the Lord answered for them. He speaks for His people instead of leaving them to defend His grace.
- Door. No one qualifies by being worthy. Christ walked into the world as into a hospital; God does not find us worthy, He makes us worthy.
But go and learn what [that] is -- I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for I have not come to call righteous [men] but sinners.
Jesus is eating with tax collectors and people known as sinners, and it shocks the religious experts. His reply sends Israel's teachers back to their own Scriptures — to a line from Hosea about what God wants.
The words Jesus quotes come from the prophet Hosea. Hosea spoke to a nation that kept up its rituals while its heart went bad:
Both Ephraim and Judah had corrupted themselves badly. Yet at the same time they appear to have been very careful in keeping their sacrificial ceremonies, as if attention to outward forms could win God's favour... That is, character and state — the character and state produced by knowing Jehovah as a God of mercy — counted for more before God than outward observances. Those observances were worth nothing unless they showed a real spiritual condition... The Pharisees condemned Him for eating with tax collectors and sinners. In defending what He did, the Lord convicted them of ignorance of the heart of God.
Ceremony had turned into a reason to look down on people. As one commentator puts it, the formal sacrifices of religious Jews "had become a matter of spiritual pride to them, which moved them to despise those in need instead of having compassion toward them."
Sacrifice is something a person brings to God. Mercy is something God gives:
"Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.'" There is the keynote to all God's ways. Did you think God wanted something from you to put things right?
Commentators differ over the force of the quotation. Some read it as a strike against empty ritual. Another writer puts the weight elsewhere:
It was the promise of God that when man had no resources left, He would use His right to show mercy. So the Lord was among Israel not to receive sacrifice but to show mercy. The suggestion is that this is what the passage means, rather than a rebuke to formalism and religious ceremony, which some see in it.
Jesus says He did not come to call the righteous. So who counts as righteous, and does anyone qualify?
The Pharisees had overlooked what the Lord said through Hosea: that He preferred the showing of mercy to the offering of ceremonial sacrifices. Many a modern Pharisee overlooks it. They also knew nothing of His mission to the spiritually sick, calling sinners to repentance. Had He come to call "the righteous," the Pharisees would no doubt have come forward in crowds. But He would have rejected every one of them, since "the righteous" by God's standard do not exist.
The image behind this reply is a doctor and his patients. That picture shapes what His mercy looks like:
The religion of the rabbis showed little mercy to these tax collectors, though as a class they were "sick" enough and needed the physician. But here was One who was the perfect expression of divine mercy. He did not simply receive the objects of it; He went out after them. He came not to call the righteous but sinners. If so, the chief of sinners would have the chief claim.
The same commentator adds that this call did not bypass repentance but produced it: Christ came "not as disregarding the need men had of repentance, but to bring them to it. It is the goodness of God known that brings men to it."
Older English Bibles end the verse with the words "to repentance." The best manuscripts leave them out here. They belong to Luke's account of the same scene:
It is worth noticing that in the parallel passages of Matthew and Mark the best authorities leave out "to repentance." How far from the truth it is to say that repentance belongs only to the Jews! Luke, following the deep moral design of his Gospel, has these words.
Repentance itself has been described as "a change of mind Godward that leads to a judgement of self and one's acts... This would not be possible but for the thought of mercy in God."
- Mercy is the keynote. God is not asking you to bring something that puts things right; He desires mercy, and mercy is what He gives.
- Ritual without heart is worthless. Outward observance counted for nothing unless it expressed a heart that knew God as merciful.
- Ignorance of God's heart. The Pharisees owned the Scriptures, and Jesus still had to tell them to go and learn. They knew nothing of the heart of God.
- No righteous to call. If Christ had come for "the righteous," He would have turned every candidate away, because by God's standard none exist.
- Mercy on the move. The Physician does not wait for the sick to arrive. He goes out after them. So the worst case has the strongest claim.