What is the significance of Jesus eating with sinners?

The Lord declares the mind of God on this subject, and His own mission. He came to call sinners; He would have mercy. It was God in grace, and not man with his pretended righteousness counting on his merits.

64 "Levi made him a great feast in his own house, and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them; but their scribes and Pharisees murmured." It was a terrible sight and blow to such. But Jesus answers, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." They mistook the Lord altogether: He came to shew how grace could deal with those who had no righteousness.

The scribes and Pharisees raise the question as to how it could be possible that a righteous teacher should sit and eat with unclean men and sinners. Jesus hears this, and answers with divine wisdom. The simplicity of the answer equals its force. "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Here it is grace that is working; and the work of Jesus presents a full contrast to the law. The law demanded human justice from man; Christ and the gospel announce divine grace which reigns and reveals God's righteousness. Here we have grace; as to divine righteousness, it should be fully revealed when Christ should have accomplished His work upon the cross: truth as important as it is precious!

The Feast in Levi's House. — From that house crammed full to the door, through the roof of which the palsied man had been let down at the feet of Jesus, the Lord, going forth, found Himself on the shore of the lake (Mark 2:13), and passing along He saw a publican named Levi sitting at the receipt of custom. To him He addressed just two words, "Follow Me." Without delay, that tax-gatherer, as he was, obeyed, sacrificing income and future temporal prospects to follow the One who, how or when we know not, had evidently got hold of his heart. For, not content with surrendering a lucrative calling, he made for the Lord, as Luke tells us, a great feast in his house, inviting to it a great number of publicans and of others to sit down with Christ. Actions, it is said, speak louder than words. Surely no one could have more plainly and fully expressed what the Lord had become to him, than his honouring Him in this way, and affording thereby an opportunity for his friends and acquaintances to come within the sound of that teaching which had so powerfully acted upon himself.

The Lord's Mission. — The feast went on, no seat apparently unoccupied, for there was a great company which sat down; the joy, too, that had reigned was still uninterrupted. But now the Pharisees and their scribes murmured against the disciples, saying, "Why do ye eat and drink with the publicans and sinners?" Or, as Matthew himself relates it (9:11), "Why eats your Master with the publicans and sinners?" Were these wretched cavillers to spoil the feast, and to damp the joy which the host surely proposed to himself, of letting all the invited guests hear words of power and blessing for their souls' profit? The Pharisees might look on and murmur. But in order that neither the disciples should be troubled by inability to answer the question, nor Matthew be disturbed by such an intrusion, the Lord at once took up the question, and closed the mouths of those murmurers. "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:31-32). Sinners they had spoken of. It was sinners that the Lord came to call to repentance. Did they raise their objection in support of their own social rules? Nobody had asked them to break them. Would they contend for their observance, and desire the Lord and His disciples to conform to them? A new day had dawned. Those who thought themselves righteous (18:9) were like people in health, who did not need a physician. For such He had not come. No wonder they murmured! One must be a subject of grace to understand it. One must learn one's need of it to rejoice at it. Of all that they were ignorant. And they knew not the character of the times. God was calling sinners to repentance. Divine grace was at work. And Jehovah, the God of Israel, was there in the person of Jesus Christ. Humanly devised social rules may have to give way before the activity of grace. The Pharisees were silenced.

And Matthew invites Him to his house and makes Him a feast. It does not say in this Gospel that it was Matthew's house; in another Gospel the Holy Spirit has made a record of it (Mark 2:14-17). Here a company of tax-gatherers and sinners are come together, and He, the Holy One, the One who had come to seek and to save that which is lost, reclines with them at table and eats with them. Again we say, what a scene of grace! He who created the heavens and the earth in the creature's place in living touch with those who rebelled against Him! And there they stand, the poor, miserable, self-righteous Pharisees. They would in their religiousness, with their broad phylacteries, keeping the outside clean, not even touch a tax-gatherer, 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 whose words of divine authority they had heard, whose deeds of omnipotent power they had seen, who had manifested Himself as Jehovah, and He eats with tax-gatherers and sinners. Not the poor, wicked, self-confessed thieves, the tax-gatherers and harlots appear in this scene and throughout the Gospel as Satan's masterpiece, but the proud, religious, self-righteous Pharisee. John the Baptist with his divine message came, and the Pharisees were rightly called by him the generation of vipers, but never the tax-gatherers and the harlots, who gladly came and confessed their sins and owned their lost condition. "John came to you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not; but the tax-gatherers and harlots believed him; but ye, when ye saw it, repented not yourselves afterwards to believe him" (Matt. 21:32). So here we see them, without any faith in Jesus and no knowledge of the God of mercy, wrapped up in the filthy rags, their own righteousness. What else then could they do but speak against the Lord's gracious way? "Why eateth your Master with tax-gatherers and sinners?" And the self-righteous Pharisees of ritualistic Christendom are not different from these, their forefathers, the Pharisees. No heart for Christ, no understanding of grace and no knowledge of God. In the answer our Lord gives He shows that what He does is in fullest harmony with His having come down into the earth. God would have mercy and He had come to show it. "They that are strong have not need of a physician, but those that are ill. 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."

According to the latter interpretation the sentence is a declaration that God desires not the sacrifices of the law but the merciful deeds of man to his fellow-creatures. But while this statement is true in itself, and indeed expressed in other portions of Scripture, the words of the prophet as used here by the Lord show that in receiving publicans and sinners He was performing the divine function of displaying mercy, which was in accordance with the will of God, rather than the offering of sacrifice by those whose hearts were far from God, like the Pharisees. It was for the remission, not for the judgment of sins, that the Servant of Jehovah, the "dayspring from on high," had visited His people; and His mission emanated from the tender mercy [the heart of mercy] of God Himself (Luke 1:78). While it abides true that judgment shall overtake every evil work, it was shown in the house of Levi the tax-gatherer how the mercy of God gloried against judgment.

(1) The call of Levi to the apostleship must have been startling to a Jew. The tax-gatherer was hated as the symbol of foreign dominion; hated for his often unscrupulous exactions, and hated more than all if (as was here the case) it was a Jew who lent himself to what was considered the oppression of his own people. But "tax-gatherers and sinners," thus associated in the language of the multitude, followed the Baptist, while Pharisees and Sadducees turned away from him; and so was it now in the Lord's case. Levi follows Him with unhesitating promptitude, leaving all he had. And the feast that he makes Him is furnished with guests which show how fully he has entered into his Master's mind.

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.

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.

In Matthew it is stated that the Lord vindicated His reception of the moral outcasts by a quotation from the prophet Hosea: "Go ye," He said, "and learn what that means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice (Matt. 9:13; Hosea 6:6). It was the promise of God that when man was in a resourceless case, He would exercise His prerogative of mercy. The Lord accordingly was in the midst of Israel not to receive sacrifice but to show mercy. For it is suggested that this is the significance of the passage, rather than a rebuke to formalism and religious ceremonialism which some see in it.

Do you remember the lovely expressions regarding mercy in the Gospels where the Lord speaks. It is a lovely theme for a troubled soul to dwell upon, and for all our souls to dwell upon. "And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, Why eats your Master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said to them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." It is not whole folk that need a doctor, but people who are sick. Then He says, "But go ye and learn what that means, I will have 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? "Go ye and learn what that means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Matt. 9:10-13). That again is what comes from God. Now go a little further. You find it comes out in the twelfth chapter, where He was blessing and healing on the Sabbath Day. "But if ye had known what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless" (ver. 7). Observe, they were condemning Him for blessing a man on the Sabbath Day. What is His answer? "But if ye had known what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless."

That God delights in mercy has perpetual testimony in His Word; and a lovely instance of it is found in the Book of Micah. There you get the character of God, and the attitude of God towards a troubled people, beautifully expressed. Well may they exult in God's mercy and faithfulness, saying: "Who is a God like to thee, that pardons iniquity, and passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retains not his anger for ever, because he delights in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn to our fathers from the days of old" (Micah 7:18-20). What a thrill of joy goes through the heart to find that a holy God so delights in mercy. And if you are here this evening a wretched, good-for-nothing, undone sinner, understand that the Lord delights to meet you, and He will gladly show you mercy, pardon all your sins, and give you the knowledge of His forgiveness.

As a general principle it may be said, before considering this citation from Hosea, that a believer of any dispensation should be the expression of God as revealed in that dispensation. For example, the standard for a Jewish saint was Jehovah as made known in that economy, whereas the standard for a Christian is God as revealed in Christ. (See Eph. 5:1-13, Col. 3:10-13.) To bear this in mind will aid in the understanding of the prophet's words. Both Ephraim and Judah (Hosea 5, 6) had sadly corrupted themselves, and yet at the same time they would seem to have been punctilious in the observance of their sacrificial ceremonies, as if attention to outward forms could commend them to God's favour. "Therefore," says the prophet, speaking in Jehovah's name, "have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth … for I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:5-6.) That is, character and state - the character and state produced by the knowledge of Jehovah as a God of mercy - were of more avail before God than outward observances, these last being utterly valueless unless they were the indication of a spiritual condition. (Compare Micah 6:6-8.) Turning now to Matthew's Gospel, it is very interesting to note the Lord's application of this Scripture. The Pharisees condemned Him for eating with publicans and sinners. In vindicating His action, the Lord convicted them of ignorance of the heart of God. "Go ye," He said, "and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Priding themselves upon being the people of God, the objects of His exclusive favour, and the guardians of His word, the Lord shows that they had utterly misconceived the character of the God in whom they boasted; that they had read in vain the many scriptures which contained the pre-intimations of His grace and mercy toward poor sinners, and consequently that in their self-righteousness they were utterly misrepresenting God. In chapter 12 the application of the Scripture, while bringing out the same truth, is slightly different. Here the Pharisees, in their censorious spirit, condemned the disciples for plucking the ears of corn upon the Sabbath day. After citing examples from the Scriptures which should have opened their eyes to perceive the claims of the One whom they had presumed to assail, and should have convinced them of their unscriptural folly, the Lord added, "But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." The point here again is that the hearts of these censors of the disciples were in utter contrariety to the heart of God. Cased in their self-righteousness, not a ray of God's blessed mercy or grace had ever penetrated their souls, and hence they judged everyone round about them by their own thoughts instead of by the thoughts of God. Alas! how easy it is for ourselves, who live in the full light of the day of grace, to fall into the same mistake, and to forget that we are called to be the exponents of God's heart of grace in the midst of His professing people, and before an evil world.