What does it mean that those who are well have no need of a physician (Matthew 9:12)?

Man, however, objects. "Their scribes and the Pharisees murmured at his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with the tax-gatherers and sinners?" They had not the honesty to complain to Jesus, but vented their spleen against His disciples. But the Lord answers for His people. "Jesus answering said to them, They that are in sound health have not need of a physician; but those that are ill" — a simple but most satisfactory and impressive answer. Grace always enables even a man, a believer, to speak the whole truth; it is the only thing that does. How much more did He, Who was full of grace, speak in the power of truth! Granted that they were sick; they were just the persons 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. As He said, "I am not come to call righteous [persons], but sinful ones to repentance."130 It is instructive to observe that in the parallel passage of Matthew and of Mark the best authorities omit "to repentance." How far from the truth is it that repentance is a Jewish thing! Luke, according to the deep moral design of his Gospel, has these words.

But the Lord was watchful over His own. It was not yet the time to put words of wisdom into their mouths to speak for Him as His witnesses (Matt. 10:19). But He answered for them, confuting the sophistry of the scribes. "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners," It was in this manner that the two-edged sword of truth proceeded out of His mouth for their moral judgment. For why was it 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 were made welcome? What sort of a physician is he who refuses to minister to any but the hale and the hearty?

The Lord then definitely announced that He was come not to call the righteous (i.e. those who were righteous in their own eyes; indeed otherwise there is none righteous, no, not one), but sinners. These who responded should be washed, sanctified, justified, and made inheritors of the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-11), but those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others, except they repented, would most assuredly perish in their sins.

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to the disciples what was really a charge against the Lord "Why eats your master," etc. And when Jesus heard, He said unto them, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." There you have two classes; those who trusted they were righteous did not realise their need of the physician, though really needing Him as much as any. It is a dangerous thing to attack the Lord's disciples. The Lord uses scripture more against the adversaries than against the disciples in ver. 13. "I am not come to call the righteous but sinners." This was the business of the Lord here. He came on behalf of poor sinners — "to seek and to save the lost." He is the One who wills, who shows mercy. If a soul is saved and blest, it is because God has had mercy. We all belong to one common lump, and those saved are vessels of mercy afore-prepared unto glory; while in the case of the lost, He endures "with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction" — fitted not by God, but fitted by themselves to destruction.

However, Scribes and Pharisees expressed their haughty criticism, not to the Lord, but to His disciples, for their eating with tax collectors and sinners. Because of their personal feeling against tax collectors, they classed them with the general run of "sinners" who probably did not zealously follow the rituals and regulations of the religious leaders. Such rituals were only a cover-up for their own sins, but their proud self-righteousness did not admit this. 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.

The Lord answered them in such a way that ought to have made them ashamed of themselves, as well as to have caused them concern about their own sinful condition. Those who are well, He says, have no need of a physician, but those who are sick (vs.31-32). He was Himself the divine Physician, come in grace, to meet the need of those sick because of sin -- not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (v.32). How could they criticize a mission so gracious as this? Why did they not see themselves in their true light as sinners in need of repentance and of the grace of the Lord Jesus?

The answer of the Lord is clear and to the point: it is those who are sick who need a physician. Christ had come with the answer to the misery and sin of mankind, not calling the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Only the great grace and power of God can work this precious result. Scribes and Pharisees needed Him as much as any others, but their pretended righteousness kept them from Him. They had no heart whatever for repentance, just as some people, infected by cancer, strongly insist there is nothing wrong with them.

As I mentioned earlier, our Lord also addresses the Laodiceans in His love and in His care, because He continues to be the great Lover as well as the great Physician, for He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2: 13). In His earthly ministry He had said, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick" (Matt. 9: 12). Those who (think they) are whole are unaware of their need of a physician; and those who (think they) are righteous do not see their need of the Lord's the gracious intervention.

"No, I believe nothing of the sort; for alas, all will not take the place of being lost sinners, and hence do not feel their need of a Saviour, and so do not trust Him. His words are true: 'They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' The whole, the righteous — or those who think they are such — need Him not, but sinners are welcome to Him. As one of the latter, I have received Him, and He has saved me out and out, blessed be His name!"

Grace has its way, and Levi follows Jesus; and this becomes an initiative of work of a like pattern. For to Levi's house many come of those whom the Jews put together as of one kind ― "tax-gatherers and sinners" ― and take their places at table with Jesus and His disciples; and it is added as an explanatory note upon this, "for there were many, and they followed Him." This is only what the Lord Himself told the Pharisees as to John; and they that had ear for John's stern insistence on repentance had ear also on this very account for the "piping" of grace.

But the Pharisees and scribes find fault with this laxity, as they conceive it. "Why is it," they ask, "that He eateth and drinketh with tax-gatherers and sinners?" His answer is conclusive: He is the Physician of souls: will He surround Himself, then. with the healthy or diseased? He does not come on the vain quest for righteousness, which the law had already proved vain: then indeed He would have been; as they thought Him, in a wrong place; but He had made no such mistake. Were they making none? "I came not to call the righteous but sinners." And sinners are they who have always heard that call.

But the scribes and Pharisees as naturally murmur: why eat and drink, they ask, with such as these? The Lord's answer is as simple as can be, and as sufficient. He is a physician looking for the sick; and not, therefore, 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.

What is the language of this act? What does it speak to our hearts and minds of the intentions and thoughts of God? Does it not proclaim as loudly as though it were written across the sky the fact that Christ's mission was not to call the righteous, but sinners? Does it not show us that the Physician's journey was not for those that were whole, but for the sick? It encourages the man that is most conscious of his sinful estate, who is most burdened in conscience by reason of his guilt, for it is God's language to assure him that it was his case the Saviour came to undertake.