The Great Physician's Offensive Grace Text: Luke 5:27-32
Introduction: The Scandal of Grace
We live in a world that is obsessed with categories. We sort people into boxes, neat and tidy, and we do it with a religious fervor. We have our boxes for the good people, the respectable people, the people who vote like us and shop at the same stores. And then we have our other boxes, the ones for the deplorables, the outcasts, the traitors, the sinners. This is not a new phenomenon. It is the ancient human project of self-justification. We build our little towers of righteousness by measuring ourselves against those we deem less righteous. And nothing exposes the flimsy, rotten foundation of this project like the arrival of Jesus Christ.
In our passage today, Jesus commits a profound social, political, and religious offense. He does not simply tolerate a sinner; He seeks him out. He does not just speak to an outcast; He calls him into His inner circle. He does not just acknowledge the existence of the unclean; He goes to their party and eats their food. This is not the behavior of a respectable religious teacher. This is the behavior of a radical, a revolutionary, a physician who is not afraid of the plague ward. This is the scandal of grace, and it is a scandal that offends the self-righteous in every generation, including our own.
The Pharisees and scribes had a system. It was a system of boundaries, of separation, of ritual purity. Their goal was to keep the holy separate from the profane, to keep the clean from being contaminated by the unclean. And in their minds, there was no one more profane, more contaminated, more politically and spiritually leprous than a tax collector. A tax collector was not just a man with a questionable profession. He was a traitor to his people, a collaborator with the pagan Roman occupiers, and an extortioner who grew rich on the backs of his own countrymen. To the religious establishment, a man like Levi was not just a sinner; he was the poster boy for sin. And Jesus walks right up to his booth and says, "Follow Me."
We must understand that this story is not a gentle suggestion for us to be a little nicer to people we don't like. It is a declaration of war against every system of self-righteousness. It is a frontal assault on the idea that we can make ourselves right with God by avoiding the wrong kind of people. Jesus did not come to build a holy huddle; He came to invade a hospital for the terminally ill. And as we will see, the only people who are offended by this are the patients who refuse to admit they are sick.
The Text
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.” And he left everything behind, and rose up and began to follow Him. 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. And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
(Luke 5:27-32 LSB)
The Sovereign Call (v. 27-28)
The scene opens with a divine initiative. Jesus is the actor, the one who seeks and finds.
"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.' And he left everything behind, and rose up and began to follow Him." (Luke 5:27-28)
Jesus "noticed" him. This is not a casual glance. This is the gaze of sovereign election. Jesus saw Levi, not just as a tax collector, but as a future apostle, Matthew, the author of the first gospel. He saw past the collaboration, the extortion, and the public hatred, and saw a man whom the Father had given to Him. The call of God is not a general invitation to a job fair. It is a specific, personal, and effectual summons.
The command is simple and absolute: "Follow Me." This is not a negotiation. It is a royal command that creates the obedience it demands. This is what we call irresistible grace. It is not that Levi had no will in the matter, but rather that in that moment, the Holy Spirit so worked in his heart that his will was liberated from its bondage to greed and sin, and he willingly, joyfully, chose to follow Christ. The call of Christ is a creative call. Just as He said "Let there be light," and there was light, He says "Follow Me," and a dead sinner becomes a living disciple.
And Levi's response is immediate and total. "He left everything behind." This was not a small thing. He left a lucrative career. He left his security, his income, his entire way of life. The tax booth represented a world of compromise and earthly comfort. To leave it was to burn his bridges. There was no going back. True conversion is always marked by a radical break with the past. It is a turning from one master to another. You cannot follow Jesus and keep one foot in the tax booth of your old life. He demands, and deserves, total allegiance.
The Celebration of Grace (v. 29)
Levi's first act as a disciple is not to go to seminary or join a committee. His first act is to throw a party.
"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." (Luke 5:29)
This is a beautiful picture of what happens when grace gets ahold of a man. Levi's heart is overflowing with gratitude and joy, and he wants his friends to meet the source of that joy. And who are his friends? "A great crowd of tax collectors and other people." The sinners. The outcasts. He doesn't try to clean up his guest list to impress Jesus. He knows Jesus didn't call him because he was impressive. He called him because he was a sinner. So Levi gathers all the other sinners he knows and brings them to Jesus.
This is evangelism at its most basic and most powerful. It is not a program; it is a party. It is the natural overflow of a transformed life. When you have found the pearl of great price, you don't hide it in a drawer. You host a feast and invite everyone you know to come and see it. Notice the posture: "reclining at the table with them." Jesus is not standing in the corner, holding a tract, keeping a safe distance. He is at the table, sharing a meal, in fellowship with them. In that culture, to eat with someone was to accept them, to identify with them. Jesus is identifying with sinners, not in their sin, but in their need for a Savior.
The Grumbling of the Self-Righteous (v. 30)
Where there is a celebration of grace, the grumbling of legalists is never far behind.
"And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, 'Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?'" (Genesis 1:3 LSB)
The Pharisees were the professional holy men. Their entire identity was built on their separation from sin and sinners. They saw Jesus's table fellowship as a compromise of the highest order. It violated their purity codes. It blurred the lines they had worked so hard to draw. They could not comprehend a holiness that was robust enough to engage with sin and not be defiled by it. Theirs was a fragile, quarantined holiness. Christ's is an invasive, conquering holiness.
Notice they don't have the courage to confront Jesus directly. They go to His disciples. This is a classic tactic of the enemy. They seek to sow doubt and division among the followers. "Why does your teacher do this?" It is a question designed to make the disciples defensive, to make them question the wisdom and righteousness of their new master. The charge is simple: guilt by association. If you eat with sinners, you must approve of their sin. This is the same slander that is thrown at faithful Christians today who dare to engage with the culture instead of retreating into a sterile bubble.
The Physician's Manifesto (v. 31-32)
Jesus overhears their grumbling and responds with one of the most foundational statements of His entire ministry.
"And Jesus answered and said to them, 'It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.'" (Luke 5:31-32)
With this one statement, Jesus blows up their entire religious framework. He reframes the entire situation. They see it as a matter of ritual purity. Jesus defines it as a matter of spiritual health. He is a physician, and a physician's place is with the sick. To criticize a doctor for being in a hospital is absurd. That is his job. That is his mission. Jesus is saying, "You see a party of sinners; I see a ward full of dying patients, and I am the only one with the cure."
Then comes the devastating punchline: "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." This is a masterpiece of divine irony. Was Jesus saying that the Pharisees were actually righteous and therefore didn't need Him? Of course not. The Bible is clear that "none is righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10). Jesus is taking their own self-assessment and turning it back on them. He is saying, in effect, "According to your own diagnosis, you are well. You think you are righteous. Therefore, I have nothing to offer you. My medicine is only for those who know they are sick. My call is only for those who know they are sinners."
The great tragedy of the Pharisees was not their sin; it was their self-righteousness. Their pride was a spiritual sickness that prevented them from seeing their need for the Physician. They were terminally ill, but they had convinced themselves they were the healthiest people in the room. And so, the Great Physician walked right past them to treat the man who was bleeding in the gutter, the man who knew he was sick and was desperate for a cure.
The call of the gospel is not to the righteous, but to sinners. And it is a call to repentance. This is crucial. Jesus does not eat with sinners to affirm them in their sin. He eats with them to call them out of their sin. Grace is not a soft, sentimental tolerance of sin. Grace is a rugged, powerful, life-altering force that rescues sinners from their sin. Repentance is the necessary response to this grace. It is the turning away from the old life of the tax booth and the turning toward the new life of following Christ. Levi did not stay at his tax booth. He left it all behind. Grace always leads to transformation.
Conclusion: Are You Sick?
This passage confronts every one of us with the most important question we will ever face: Are you sick? Do you know that you are a sinner in need of a physician? Because the only people Jesus cannot save are the people who believe they do not need saving.
Modern evangelicalism is filled with Pharisees. They are respectable, church-going people who have their theology straight and their lives in order. They avoid the big, messy sins. They look down on the tax collectors and sinners of our day, the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the homosexuals, the liberals. They grumble when the church gets its hands dirty trying to reach such people. They are more concerned with protecting their own purity than with seeing the lost get saved. And in so doing, they prove that they are the sickest of all, afflicted with the deadly cancer of self-righteousness.
The good news of the gospel is that the Physician is in. He has come, not for the righteous, but for sinners. He has come for the Levis of this world. He has come for the traitors, the extortioners, the outcasts, the failures. He has come for you. The only requirement for treatment is that you admit you are sick. The only prerequisite for the call is that you admit you are a sinner.
If you are here today and you feel the weight of your sin, if you know that you are spiritually bankrupt, if you feel like an outcast whom no respectable person would want, then I have glorious news. You are exactly the kind of person Jesus came to save. His invitation is for you. His feast is for you. His call is to you. "Follow Me." Leave your tax booth behind, whatever it may be, and come to the party. Come to the Physician. He is the only one who can make you well.