Bird's-eye view
In this brief but potent narrative, we witness the sovereign grace of Jesus Christ in action. The Lord, having just demonstrated His authority to forgive sins by healing a paralytic, now demonstrates the reach of that forgiveness by calling a tax collector, Matthew, to be one of His twelve apostles. This was not just an offer of employment; it was a summons to salvation and a complete reordering of a man's life. The call is immediate and effective. The subsequent scene, a dinner party at Matthew's house, becomes the backdrop for a foundational lesson on the nature of Jesus' mission. When the self-righteous Pharisees object to Jesus' choice of dinner companions, a motley crew of tax collectors and sinners, Jesus delivers three sharp, memorable responses. He is a physician for the sick, not the healthy. He desires mercy, not sacrifice. And His mission is to call sinners, not the righteous. This passage is a beautiful encapsulation of the gospel: God's grace interrupts the lives of the unworthy, brings them into fellowship with Himself, and in doing so, offends the sensibilities of the religiously proud.
This is the gospel in miniature. It shows us the power of Christ's call, the scandal of His grace, and the radical redefinition of true righteousness. It is not about external conformity to a set of rules, but about recognizing one's own spiritual sickness and coming to the only Physician who can heal.
Outline
- 1. The Sovereign Call of the King (Matt 9:9-13)
- a. The Unlikely Disciple (Matt 9:9)
- b. The Scandalous Fellowship (Matt 9:10-11)
- c. The King's Threefold Defense (Matt 9:12-13)
- i. The Physician and the Sick (Matt 9:12)
- ii. The Prophetic Rebuke: Mercy over Sacrifice (Matt 9:13a)
- iii. The Mission Statement: Calling Sinners (Matt 9:13b)
Context In Matthew
This event occurs within a section of Matthew's Gospel (chapters 8-9) that showcases Jesus' supreme authority. He has demonstrated authority over disease, demons, nature, and even death. Immediately prior to this, in Matthew 9:1-8, Jesus claimed and proved His authority to forgive sins by healing the paralytic, a direct challenge to the scribes. The calling of Matthew is a practical, real-world demonstration of that very authority. Forgiving sin is not an abstract theological concept; it looks like this. It looks like Jesus walking up to a man universally despised as a traitor and a cheat, and incorporating him into His inner circle. This action naturally flows into the conflict with the Pharisees, who represent the established religious authority that Jesus is challenging and replacing. The conflict over table fellowship here sets the stage for many future confrontations over what true, God-pleasing righteousness actually looks like.
Key Issues
- The Nature of Christ's Call
- The Role of Tax Collectors in First-Century Judaism
- The Meaning of Table Fellowship
- The Definition of "Sinner"
- The Physician Analogy and Spiritual Sickness
- The Interpretation of Hosea 6:6
- The Irony in "Not to Call the Righteous"
The Great Physician's Clinic
There are two ways to think you don't need a doctor. The first is to be genuinely healthy. The second is to be terminally ill but completely unaware of your condition. The Pharisees were in this second category. They looked at the tax collectors and prostitutes, the riff-raff of Jewish society, and saw them as spiritually diseased, which they were. But they looked at themselves and saw robust spiritual health. This was their fatal error. Their diagnosis was wrong. They were just as sick, but their disease was a cancer of the soul called self-righteousness, which is far more deadly than the more obvious sins of the flesh.
When Jesus comes to town, He opens a clinic for sinners. The sign on the door says, "The Great Physician is in." The waiting room is filled with the spiritually lame, blind, and leprous. Matthew the tax collector is one of them. He knows he's sick. His profession was a constant reminder of his alienation from his own people and, he likely assumed, from God. But the Pharisees walk by, sniff disdainfully at the clientele, and congratulate themselves on their excellent health. Jesus' mission is to heal the sick, and you cannot be healed until you first admit you have a disease. This is why the gospel is such good news to the broken and such an offense to the proud.
Verse by Verse Commentary
9 And as Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax office; and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he stood up and followed Him.
The action is stark and simple. Jesus is walking, He sees, and He speaks. The man He sees is Matthew, also called Levi. He is a publican, a tax collector. In the eyes of his fellow Jews, this made him a traitor and a thief. He worked for the occupying Roman forces, collecting taxes from his own people, and it was a system rife with extortion. He was a collaborator, an outcast. And he was sitting at his place of business, the very symbol of his sin and shame. Jesus' call is not a negotiation or an invitation to consider discipleship. It is a sovereign command: "Follow Me!" The effect is immediate. Matthew stood up and followed Him. This is a picture of effectual calling. The old life is abandoned in an instant. The money, the security, the whole system, is left behind for the sake of the call. When the King speaks, things happen.
10 Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples.
Matthew, in his joy, throws a party. And who do you invite to a party? Your friends. Matthew's friends were not the respectable folks from the synagogue; they were other tax collectors and people labeled as "sinners." This was likely a catch-all term for those who were either engaged in morally suspect professions or were simply lax in their observance of the Pharisaical traditions. In that culture, sharing a meal was an act of intimacy, acceptance, and fellowship. For Jesus to recline at a table with this crowd was a profound statement. He was not just tolerating them; He was welcoming them, identifying with them. The word behold signals that what is happening is astonishing. The Holy One of Israel is having dinner with the unholy.
11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?”
The Pharisees, ever-watchful and ever-critical, see this scandalous scene. Notice they don't confront Jesus directly, but go to His disciples. This is a classic tactic of undermining authority. They are trying to sow seeds of doubt. Their question is dripping with contempt. From their perspective, holiness required separation from sin and sinners. If you touched something unclean, you became unclean. Therefore, if Jesus was truly righteous, He would keep His distance. Their theology was a theology of quarantine. They could not comprehend a holiness so robust, so vibrant, that it could touch uncleanness and, instead of being defiled, actually make the unclean thing clean.
12 But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.
Jesus overhears them and responds with the first of His three defenses. It's a simple, common-sense analogy. You don't go to the doctor when you're well; you go when you're sick. Jesus is identifying Himself as a spiritual physician. His purpose is to heal. The Pharisees, by their question, were implicitly claiming to be "healthy." Jesus takes their self-assessment at face value, for the sake of the argument. "Fine," He says, "if you are as healthy as you think you are, then it makes sense that I am not here for you. I am here for these people, who are, by your own admission and theirs, sick." It's a brilliant response that exposes the absurdity of their complaint. A doctor who only associated with healthy people would be a useless doctor.
13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus then moves from a common-sense analogy to a scriptural rebuke. He tells these experts in the law to "go and learn" the meaning of a passage from Hosea 6:6. This was a deep insult. He is sending them back to elementary school. The quote, "I desire compassion, and not sacrifice," gets to the heart of their error. The Pharisees had elevated the external rituals of religion, the "sacrifices," above the internal realities of the heart, like "compassion" or mercy. Their religion was all about maintaining ceremonial purity and offering the correct sacrifices, but it was devoid of love for God and love for their broken neighbors. Jesus' act of eating with sinners was an act of profound mercy, and it was more pleasing to God than all the Pharisees' meticulous rule-keeping. He concludes with His ultimate mission statement: "for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." This is, of course, a statement filled with divine irony. There are no truly righteous people to call (Romans 3:10). The only "righteous" people are those who, like the Pharisees, are self-righteous. Jesus' call is for those who know they are sinners, who admit their spiritual bankruptcy, and who are ready to receive the grace offered by the Great Physician.
Application
This passage forces every one of us to answer a fundamental question: Are we sick or are we healthy? Are we a sinner or are we righteous? The only wrong answer is to claim that you are righteous and healthy on your own. To do so is to adopt the position of the Pharisees and to place yourself outside the scope of Jesus' mission. The gospel is not for people who have their lives together. The gospel is for messes. It is for tax collectors, for cheats, for liars, for the sexually broken, for the proud, for the angry, for the greedy. In other words, it is for us.
The church, therefore, should not be a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners. We should be the one place on earth where a person can be honest about their brokenness without fear of being ostracized. When we see a new person walk through our doors, someone whose life is obviously a wreck, our first reaction should not be the Pharisee's "Why is he here?" but rather Jesus' "The doctor is in." We must remember that every single one of us is in the church for the same reason Matthew was at that dinner party: we received a gracious call from the Lord Jesus when we were dead in our sins. We are all trophy's of His grace. And our job now is to throw a party and invite all our old, sick friends so they can meet our Physician too.