What is the significance of Jesus eating with sinners?
The charge brought against Jesus was not that He taught badly or broke the law, but that He sat down to eat with the wrong people — tax collectors working for Rome and men and women openly known as sinners. His accusers meant it as an accusation; the commentators treat it as one of the clearest windows into who He is and why He came.
The Charge He Accepted
The complaint was made behind His back, in a mutter, and it was completely true. One writer takes the words as an admission Jesus would be glad to own:
William KellyIndeed He does; it is His boast. It is the going out of Divine love to receive sinners. And it was His grace as a man that stooped to eat with them. Had He not done so, with whom could He have eaten at all? But in truth, if He stooped to eat with men, He did not choose His company. He had come down and been shown in the flesh expressly to display the grace of God; and if so, He received sinners and ate with them.
The Creator at the Table
The shock of the scene lies in who was reclining there. At Matthew's house, the One through whom everything was made took a seat among people who had lived in open rebellion against Him:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinHere 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.
The Physician's Answer
Jesus replied with a picture anyone could follow: doctors go where the sickness is. One writer notes that His answer names two things wrong with us at once, and meets both:
W. W. FeredayOur Lord's words in Luke 5:31-32 are familiar to all: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." 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.
Welcome Without Approval
Eating with sinners was never a shrug at what they had done. The word Jesus used for His own mission was "call" — He was inviting them away from the life they were in:
Hamilton SmithThey 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.
Close Contact, Uncontaminated
Scripture calls Him separate from sinners. That separation was moral, not a matter of distance — which is precisely why the religious leaders, who practised separation by keeping away, could not recognise it:
An Outline of Sound WordsHis separation from sinners did not consist in not having contact with them in any way, for the Pharisees and scribes who practised legal separation reproached Him with the words, "This man receives sinners, and eats with them." Jesus had not come to call the righteous, but sinners, and how often sinners were found in the company of the Master. Yet though in the company of sinners, Jesus was separate from them, a Man out of heaven, all His thoughts and desires relating to the glory of God and the blessing of those whom He had come to save from their sins.
Why a Shared Meal Says So Much
In the Bible a table is never only about food. Sitting down to eat carries a meaning that explains why the Pharisees were so disturbed by it:
Raymond K. CampbellTo eat at an altar or table is expressive of communion and fellowship with that altar or table as well as with those at that altar. To sit at a table and eat denotes identification with that table and with what it stands for.
Grace Nobody Can Follow
The same murmur followed Him to the end, when He invited Himself into the house of Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector. One writer reads the crowd's bewilderment as proof of how foreign grace is to us:
William KellyBut nothing is so unintelligible to a man as God's grace. "And when they saw it they all murmured, saying that He had gone in to lodge with a sinful man." How blessed that so He could, and so He would! How hopeless the blank for us if it were not so! It suits His love to deal in this way with those who have not the smallest claim.
Summary
- Charge. "This man receives sinners and eats with them" was meant as an insult and is entirely true — the accusation is the good news stated by His enemies.
- Descent. The One who made heaven and earth took a seat among people who had rebelled against Him; had He refused sinners' company, He could have eaten with no one at all.
- Diagnosis. He answered as the Physician who goes where the sickness is: man is both diseased and guilty, and He came as Healer and Saviour for both.
- Distinction. Sharing a table meant identification and fellowship — yet He stayed separate in heart while never separate in reach, and He called sinners out of their sins rather than excusing them.
- Disbelief. Grace remains the one thing people cannot make sense of; He deals in love with those who have not the slightest claim on Him.