Commentary - Luke 5:27-32

Bird's-eye view

In this brief but potent narrative, Luke shows us the radical nature of the gospel's call and the offensive character of its grace. Jesus, fresh from demonstrating His divine authority to heal leprosy and forgive sins, now demonstrates that same authority by calling a man from the most despised profession in Israel. The call of Levi, a tax collector, is a direct assault on the religious sensibilities of the day. It is one thing to heal a leper who cannot help his condition, but it is quite another to extend fellowship to a man who has willingly chosen a life of extortion and collaboration with the pagan occupiers. Jesus not only calls this man but then goes to his house to feast with a whole crowd of his disreputable friends. This act provokes the grumbling of the Pharisees, which in turn provides the occasion for one of Jesus' most memorable statements about His own mission: He has come as a physician for the spiritually sick, to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. This passage, then, is a beautiful tableau of sovereign grace, radical transformation, and the upside-down values of the kingdom of God.

The scene is a microcosm of the entire gospel. A sinner, dead in his trespasses, is sovereignly and effectively called by Christ. The response is immediate and total: he leaves everything. This new life in Christ immediately overflows into joyful celebration and hospitality, drawing other sinners into the orbit of Jesus. This, in turn, draws the ire of the self-righteous, who cannot comprehend a grace that fellowships with the unclean. And Jesus' response to them clarifies the central purpose of His incarnation. He did not come for those who believe they have it all together, but for those who know they are spiritually bankrupt and desperately sick.

Outline

Context In Luke

This event follows a series of powerful demonstrations of Jesus' authority. In chapter 4, He taught with authority, cast out demons with authority, and healed with authority. In chapter 5, He has demonstrated authority over the natural world (the great catch of fish), over disease (cleansing a leper), and, most shockingly, He has claimed the divine prerogative to forgive sins (healing the paralytic). The calling of Levi is the next logical step in this unfolding revelation of who Jesus is. He is not just a healer or a teacher; He is the one who has the authority to reconstitute the people of God. He is building His new community not from the religious elite, but from the outcasts and the despised. This episode sets the stage for the ongoing conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, a conflict that is fundamentally about two different religions: the religion of grace versus the religion of works.

Key Issues

The Great Physician's House Call

When a doctor makes a house call, it is because someone in that house is sick. A doctor who only ever visited the healthy would be a strange physician indeed. The Pharisees, in their spiritual blindness, had completely missed this fundamental point. They operated under the assumption that holiness was maintained through separation and quarantine. You stay holy by keeping your distance from sinners. But Jesus demonstrates a holiness of an entirely different order. His is a robust, infectious holiness. He does not fear contamination from sinners; rather, He is the source of cleansing for them. He wades into the mess of human corruption, not to be stained by it, but to heal it.

The Pharisees saw the banquet at Levi's house as a compromise, a stain on Jesus' reputation. Jesus saw it as a field hospital. He was the Great Physician, and this was His ward. The tax collectors and sinners were not a threat to His health; they were the very reason for His visit. This is the logic of the incarnation. The Word did not become flesh to admire the righteous from a safe distance. He became flesh to enter the quarantine zone of our sin and death, to touch the untouchable, and to bring healing and life where there was only disease and decay.

Verse by Verse Commentary

27 And after that He went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow Me.”

Jesus' action is deliberate. He went out and He noticed Levi. This was not a chance encounter. The Lord of glory fixed His sovereign gaze on a man who, in the eyes of his countrymen, was a traitor and a thief. Tax collectors, or publicans, were Jews who had bought a contract from the Roman government to collect taxes. They made their living by extorting more than was required. They were collaborators with the pagan oppressors and were ceremonially unclean by their constant contact with Gentiles. To the Pharisees, they were the lowest of the low. And it is to this man, sitting at his place of business, his booth of extortion, that Jesus issues a simple, authoritative command: "Follow Me." This is the effectual call of the gospel. It is not a suggestion or an invitation to negotiate. It is a royal summons that creates the response it demands.

28 And he left everything behind, and rose up and began to follow Him.

Levi's response is immediate and radical. He left everything behind. This was not a small thing. He was leaving a lucrative, if despised, career. The tax booth represented his entire livelihood, his financial security. He abandons it all. The text says he rose up, a picture of resurrection from his old life of sin, and began to follow Him. The verb tense suggests the beginning of a new, continuous action. This is what true conversion looks like. It is a clean break with the past and the beginning of a new life oriented entirely around Jesus Christ. Grace does not merely modify our old life; it gives us a new one.

29 And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them.

The first act of this new disciple is to throw a party. This is not a somber, monastic affair. It is a big reception. True repentance does not lead to mopiness; it leads to joy, celebration, and generous hospitality. And who does Levi invite? His old friends. He doesn't hide his new master from his old crowd; he brings the two together. He wants his friends, the tax collectors and other people, to meet the one who has changed his life. This is evangelism in its most natural form. The feast itself is significant. In the ancient world, to share a meal was to share life, to declare fellowship and acceptance. Jesus is not just in the same room with these people; He is reclining at the table with them, a posture of intimacy and friendship.

30 And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?”

The celebration is interrupted by the professional party-poopers. The Pharisees and their scribes, the religious experts, see this scene and are scandalized. Their reaction is not honest inquiry but grumbling. This is the sound of self-righteousness confronted with grace. They cannot attack Jesus directly, so they go after His disciples. Their question reveals their core theology: holiness is achieved by separation from sinners. For them, "tax collectors and sinners" was a technical term for the worst kind of people, those who were openly and unashamedly outside the bounds of respectable religious life. Their question is dripping with contempt. How could a man claiming to be from God possibly associate with such riffraff?

31 And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.

Jesus steps in and answers for His disciples. He doesn't dispute their premise that Levi's friends are sinners. He accepts it and uses it as the very basis for His defense. He employs a simple, common-sense analogy. Who needs a doctor? The sick, of course. A doctor who spent all his time with healthy people would be useless. By coming to this party, Jesus is simply doing His job. He is the Great Physician, and He has come to heal the spiritually diseased. This statement utterly reframes the situation. The party is not a place of moral compromise; it is a clinic. The sinners are not contaminants; they are patients.

32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

This is the punchline, and it is loaded with divine irony. When Jesus says He has not come to call the righteous, is He saying that there is a class of people who do not need Him? Of course not. He is using the Pharisees' own self-perception against them. They see themselves as the "righteous," the ones who are spiritually "well." Jesus says, in effect, "Alright, if you are as righteous as you think you are, then My message is not for you. I am here for the ones who know they are sick." His mission is specifically targeted at sinners, and the goal of His call is repentance. He does not call sinners to stay in their sin. He does not come to the sick to tell them that their sickness is actually a form of health. No, the physician comes to cure the disease. Jesus calls sinners to turn away from their sin and to turn toward God. The tragedy of the Pharisees is that by their own self-righteousness, they excluded themselves from the only one who could heal them.

Application

This passage is a bucket of ice water for any church that has begun to value respectability over grace. The church is not a museum for saints; it is a hospital for sinners. We are, all of us, the tax collectors and sinners at that table. We are the ones who were spiritually sick, terminal even, when the Great Physician made His house call to us. Our only righteousness is the righteousness of another, Christ Himself, imputed to us by faith.

Therefore, we must be on constant guard against the leaven of the Pharisees. Do we grumble when "messy" people come into our midst? Do we secretly prefer the company of the well-scrubbed and respectable over the broken and the outcast? Do we define our holiness by who we avoid rather than by the grace we extend? Levi's first instinct was to introduce his sinful friends to Jesus. Is that our instinct? Or do we prefer to keep our Christian lives neat and tidy, separate from the messiness of real, unvarnished sinners?

The gospel call is a call to repentance. This means we must first admit that we are sick. The man who thinks he is well will never go to the doctor. The person who believes they are fundamentally "righteous" will never see their need for a savior. The good news of the gospel is for bad people. It is for tax collectors, for prostitutes, for rebels, for liars, for hypocrites, it is for us. And when that call comes, the only proper response is to do as Levi did: leave everything, rise up, and follow Him, throwing a great feast of joy for all the other sinners you know.