Publicans and Sinners - Matthew 9:10-13; Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32

Again, I don’t know why the scribes and Pharisees follow Jesus around if they think he’s crazy, but of course here we find them at Matthew’s house during the feast that he (a publican and therefore sinner) is providing. They are accusing Jesus of spending time with sinners, but by default are themselves spending time with sinners, doesn’t make any sense. They are appalled by the group of people sitting and eating with Jesus and asked His disciples, “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” Pretty passive aggressive. The disciples don’t have to answer them because Jesus hears them and answers saying, “They that be whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. But go ye 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.”

The IM says, “Those regarded by the pious Jews as ‘sinners’ could have included not only people guilty of breaking commandments but also people who did not live in accordance with the Pharisees’ traditions- people whose daily work was considered unholy (like publicans) and people who were not Israelites (like Samaritans and Gentiles).” The irony here is that these scribes and Pharisees consider themselves not to be sinners, but if they actually understood the scriptures, then they would know that that’s not true. Henry D. Moyle commented in an article entitled “Our Twofold Mission,” saying, “Christ said he came to call sinners to repentance and to save them. Repentance grows out of faith in God. No matter how good we are, we have all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.” Jesus is using a metaphor here of the physical ailments of man, noting that the sick need a physician. Physicians gets sick just as much as everyone else, and no physician is so powerful as to stay the hand of death over any person. The point is that at some point everyone is sick, and everyone needs the “physician,” but the Pharisees didn’t recognize themselves in the group that needs help sometimes.

Many of the publicans and sinners embraced the message of Christ because they were despised of the people, their afflictions had humbled them. In a 1945 address Milton R. Hunter noted why Jesus’s message resonated with those who were “sick,” saying, “Never before had the downtrodden, the outcast, and the discouraged of the human family received such a powerful ray of light to heal them of their afflictions and to turn them unto God and unto a better life as when they felt the power of the message of the Master. Even the sinner learned that he and life were important, and that there was hope for him to receive something more beautiful, more joyous, and more godly than he had hitherto experienced.”