The Great Physician's Offensive Grace
Introduction: The Scandal of the Gospel Feast
The gospel is many things, but it is never respectable. It is not tame, it is not polite, and it most certainly is not safe. The gospel is a declaration of war against the tidy, self-righteous categories that men construct to keep God at a manageable distance. It is a divine invasion into the world of rebels, and it always makes a glorious mess. And nowhere do we see this holy disruption more clearly than when Jesus sits down to eat.
In our day, we have managed to domesticate Christianity. We have turned the roaring lion of Judah into a housecat that purrs contentedly in the corner of our therapeutic, consumer-driven lives. We want a Jesus who affirms our life choices, who fits neatly into our political agendas, and who would never, ever cause a scene at a dinner party. But the Jesus of the Gospels is an altogether different sort of person. He is constantly upending tables, both literally in the Temple and metaphorically in the dining rooms of the elite. He is a walking, talking scandal to the religious establishment.
This passage in Mark is a perfect snapshot of this scandalous grace. Jesus calls a man who was, by every respectable measure, an absolute traitor. A tax collector was not just a sinner; he was a collaborator with the pagan Roman oppressors, a man who made his living by extorting his own people. He was the first-century equivalent of a mob enforcer and a pornographer rolled into one, with a dash of treason thrown in for good measure. And this is the man whom Jesus not only calls to be a disciple but with whom He then shares a meal. In that culture, sharing a meal was an act of intimate fellowship and acceptance. It was a declaration of solidarity. Jesus was not just "doing outreach"; He was identifying with the outcasts. He was planting His flag in the middle of enemy territory and throwing a party.
This act was a calculated offense. It was designed to provoke, to challenge, and to expose the hollow, self-congratulatory religion of the Pharisees. They believed righteousness was achieved through careful separation, through maintaining ritual purity, through avoiding contamination by sinners. Jesus demonstrates that true righteousness, His righteousness, is not a fragile thing that can be contaminated. Rather, it is a robust, conquering power that invades and cleanses the contaminated. It is not a sterile bubble; it is a potent antibiotic. And this is a truth our generation desperately needs to recover.
The Text
And He went out again by the seashore; and the entire crowd was coming to Him, and He was teaching them. And as He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax office, and He said to him, "Follow Me!" And he stood up and followed Him. And it happened that as He was reclining at the table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and His disciples. For there were many of them, and they were following Him. And when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they were saying to His disciples, "He is eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners!" And hearing this, Jesus said to them, "Those who are healthy do not have need for a physician, but only those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
(Mark 2:13-17 LSB)
The Sovereign Summons (v. 13-14)
We begin with the public setting and the shocking call.
"And He went out again by the seashore; and the entire crowd was coming to Him, and He was teaching them. And as He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax office, and He said to him, 'Follow Me!' And he stood up and followed Him." (Mark 2:13-14)
Notice first that Jesus is teaching the crowds. His ministry is public and authoritative. He is not hiding in a corner. He is proclaiming the kingdom openly. And it is in this context of public teaching that He performs this very public and pointed act. He walks by the tax office, a place every good Jew would have detested, a symbol of their national humiliation and of Roman power. And there He sees Levi. The text says Jesus "saw" him. This is not a casual glance. This is the sovereign gaze of the Creator who sees not just the man in the booth, but the man He intends to make.
The command is stunning in its simplicity and its authority: "Follow Me!" There is no negotiation. There is no sales pitch. There is no discussion of the retirement benefits or the healthcare plan. It is a raw command, a royal summons. This is how the kingdom of God advances. It does not advance by committee meetings or by marketing campaigns. It advances by the irresistible call of the King. When Jesus calls a man, He creates the response He demands. The power is in the call itself.
And Levi's response is immediate. "He stood up and followed Him." This is the essence of true repentance. Repentance is not primarily an emotion, though emotions are certainly involved. It is a turning. It is an act of the will, enabled by grace. Levi leaves everything. He leaves his security, his income, his entire way of life, which was built on the foundation of greed and extortion. He abandons his old master, Mammon, to follow his new Master, Jesus. This is not a man adding Jesus to his portfolio of interests. This is a man being bought out of slavery by a new Lord. The call of Christ is always a call to abandon the old life, not to Christen it.
The Contagious Feast (v. 15-16)
What follows the call is not a quiet discipleship seminar, but a public celebration, a feast that throws gasoline on the fire of religious indignation.
"And it happened that as He was reclining at the table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and His disciples. For there were many of them, and they were following Him. And when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they were saying to His disciples, 'He is eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners!'" (Mark 2:15-16 LSB)
Levi, now Matthew, throws a great feast. And who does he invite? He invites his friends, his colleagues, his old cronies from the tax-collecting business. He invites a whole host of "sinners," which was the Pharisees' catch-all term for anyone who didn't live up to their meticulous, man-made standards. This is evangelism. True evangelism is not a sterile, programmatic affair. It is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Levi has found the Bread of Life, and his first instinct is to invite all the other hungry beggars he knows to the feast.
And Jesus is there, reclining at the table. This is crucial. He is not standing in the corner, handing out tracts and looking at his watch. He is participating. He is eating and drinking with them. This is table fellowship, and it signifies acceptance, friendship, and joy. This is a picture of the gospel. The gospel is a feast, not a funeral. It is a wedding banquet, and the invitation goes out to the highways and byways, to the spiritually bankrupt and the morally disreputable.
Of course, the scribes of the Pharisees are watching. They are the religious hall monitors of their day, always lurking, always taking notes, always ready to find fault. They are scandalized. Their entire system was built on separation from sin, which in practice meant separation from sinners. They operated on a principle of quarantine. To them, holiness was a fragile, delicate thing that could be contaminated by proximity to the unclean. So they mutter to the disciples, "Why does He eat with these people?" It is a question dripping with contempt. They cannot fathom a holiness that is robust, that is contagious, that is on the offensive.
The Divine Diagnosis (v. 17)
Jesus overhears their grumbling, as He always does, and He responds not with an apology, but with a divine diagnosis that cuts to the very heart of their spiritual disease.
"And hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'Those who are healthy do not have need for a physician, but only those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'" (Mark 2:17 LSB)
This statement is pure, distilled gospel, and it is laced with a profound and devastating irony. Jesus takes up their categories and turns them back on them like a sword. He says, in effect, "You are right. I am a doctor. And where should a doctor be, if not in the hospital? Should a doctor spend all his time in the country club with people who are congratulating themselves on their excellent health?" The tax collectors and sinners knew they were sick. They had no illusions about their moral health. Their sin was public, it was notorious, and they were under no delusions of grandeur. They knew they needed a physician.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, were the ones who were truly sick, mortally sick, with the cancer of self-righteousness. But they thought they were healthy. They were the patient with stage four cancer who insists he only has a mild case of indigestion. Their very "righteousness" was the symptom of their terminal illness. They had inoculated themselves against grace. When Jesus says, "I did not come to call the righteous," He is not saying that the Pharisees actually were righteous. He is saying that He cannot heal a man who will not admit he is sick. You cannot give the cure to someone who insists they are in perfect health.
This is the fundamental divide in all of humanity. It is not the divide between the good people and the bad people. It is the divide between the sinners who know they are sinners, and the sinners who think they are righteous. The gospel has nothing to say to the self-righteous man, except "Woe to you." But to the man who knows he is a sinner, who comes with empty hands and a bankrupt soul, the gospel has everything to say. It says, "Welcome to the feast."
Conclusion: The Hospital for Sinners
This story forces a question upon us, and it is the central question of the Christian faith. With whom do you identify? Do you identify with the Pharisees, standing at a distance, critiquing the company Jesus keeps, confident in your own moral resume? Or do you identify with Levi and his friends, sinners who know they are sick and are overjoyed to have the Great Physician in their house?
The church is not a museum for saints. It is a hospital for sinners. It is a messy place, filled with people who are in various stages of recovery from the mortal disease of sin. And the moment we begin to think of it as an exclusive club for the morally accomplished, the moment we start looking down our noses at the "tax collectors and sinners" who are invited to the feast, is the moment we reveal that we have become Pharisees ourselves. It is the moment we show that we have forgotten our own diagnosis.
The grace of God is an offensive, scandalous, and glorious thing. It seeks out traitors and makes them apostles. It throws parties for prodigals. It calls the sick, the broken, the outcast, and the rebellious to the table. And it does this to show that salvation is not of works, lest any man should boast. It is entirely of Him. Our only job is to recognize our sickness, answer the call of the Physician, and then, like Levi, throw a party and invite every other sick person we know.