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.