I've been pondering a passage in Luke's Gospel lately and trying to unpack what this means for us as we see Jesus in a fuller light this year.
"After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.
Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, “Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”" Luke 5:27-32
The first thing that I want to point out to you was that the people who were the most upset by Jesus feasting with the sinners at the tax collector's house were the religious leaders of the synagogue - the ones who were supposed to be the most learned about God and His person and character were the ones that missed the point entirely! The point was not God was taking up for those who were against Him, but rather that God was on the side of and for all people!
The second point, and what I want to focus on is this: Jesus' response that the healthy or the well have no need of a physician, but the sick do. That He's come to call the sinners, not the righteous, to repentance.
The way we've read that verse for years is that Jesus is calling the sinners, those outside of the Church, to repent of their wicked ways, and while that's not incorrect, it is incomplete. We need to take a step back and look at this as a whole. Jesus is not saying that He's only calling the sinner to repent, He's saying that there's no other class of human that exists apart from Him (Romans 3:10), and that in order to come to the Physician and be healed, the first thing we must do is recognize that we are sick and in need of healing!
It wasn't that the Pharisees didn't need to be healed, it was that their pride and haughtiness blinded them from recognizing their need for healing.
That's why the Apostle Paul, the one who gave us the revelation that we are the righteous in God by Christ Jesus told us that, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy..." 1 Timothy 1:15-16
Paul didn't say this to look down on or cast aspersions on the idea or the concept that when we get saved we become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, but rather because he recognized that he would never outgrow his need for Christ and His saving power. That even though he had been saved, he was still being continually saved by the power of the Savior that was at work within him.
You see, Paul recognized that apart from Christ, I am the sick in need of a physician. I am the sinner being called to repentance. Too often, our modern Christian thought tends to lead us towards this Pharisee-ical thinking, where we think to ourselves, "Why are they hanging out with that person? Why are they around so-and-so? Don't they know it will damage their witness? Don't they know, that's not the kind of people Christians hang out with?"
No friend, that's exactly the kind of people true followers of Christ associate with. As a follower of Christ, I'm able to minister in prison to an inmate and recognize that the only difference between him and me is that I've already met with the Physician and He's healed me, so rather than be concerned with what the perception is of who I'm associating with, let me introduce you to the Great Physician who has healed and is healing me, setting my mind right to focus on the things He has for me, the One who has saved me and is still saving me! Because without Him, I'm in the same spot you are, but He desires to show His goodness and kindness to all people across the earth!
That's the point that Jesus was trying to get across. That's the message He was preaching that day in Judea. Not that He only came to save the sinner, but that until we recognize that none of us every truly graduate from our need for Him daily, we will have missed the point entirely.
By Grace,
Dave