He Came to Call Sinners (Mark 2:13-17)
He Came to Call Sinners
Mark 2:13-17
Introduction
“Come ye sinners, poor and needy, / weak and wounded, sick and sore; / Jesus ready stands to save you, / full of pity love and power.
“Come ye thirsty, come, and welcome, / God’s free bounty glorify; / true belief and true repentance, / every grace that brings you nigh.
“Let not conscience make you linger, / nor of fitness fondly dream; / all the fitness he requireth / is to feel your need of him.
“Come, ye weary, heavy laden, / lost and ruined by the fall; / if you tarry till you’re better, / you will never come at all.
“Lo! Th’incarnate God, ascended, / pleads the merit of His blood / venture on him, venture wholly; / let no other trust intrude.”
I believe the church has lost something of that tone today. As heavenly concerns have been downed out by worldly ones, spiritual concerns by fleshly ones, religious by political, the church has increasingly been drawn toward one of two responses to our disintegrating culture.
On the one hand, we have been drawn to isolationism. The culture is falling apart, and the best way that we can salvage it is to create insulated harbors of Christian sub-culture. All those we know, all those we interact with, all those we do business with, all those who teach our children and run our grocery stores are Christian. And, so it is reasoned, we remain separate from the world for the purpose of calling people into our sub-culture.
On the other hand, we have been drawn to assimilationism. The culture is falling apart, and the best way to salvage sinners is to affirm them. In other words, the best way to win sinners is to eliminate all distinctions between us. Then, hopefully, they will see that we really aren’t all that different and they will come to realize that the church really isn’t all that bad and join us.
Jesus did neither, because he was the friend of sinners. On the one hand, he would not isolate himself from those who needed him. He was the doctor come to the sick, the strong come to the weak, the rich come to the poor, the savior come to sinners. But on the other hand, he would not allow them to stay as they were, for the message of the kingdom required that they trust him and repent. Jesus did not isolate himself, nor did he assimilate himself. Rather, he offered himself to all those who humbled themselves and came to him with no righteousness to offer. Because of this, Jesus was scandalous, especially to the self-righteous.
Our accepting culture has dulled us to the scandal of this story. What would have been unthinkable to even the commonplace Jew is now expected today. Then, separation was the highest form of holiness. Today, acceptance is the highest form of love. The religious thought leaders of that day said “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Today, the pseudo-religious thought leaders would say, “Why doesn’t he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Then, they were scandalized by the acceptance of the repentant. Today, they are scandalized by his non-acceptance of the unrepentant. We might say that then, they were scandalized that Jesus would associate with repentant sinners. Today, we might be more inclined to be scandalized that Jesus would not allow repentant sinners to remain as they are.
In other words, salvation is a matter of authority. The scribes have rejected Jesus’ authority. Remember, chapter 1 was all about Jesus establishing his authority as king over his kingdom. He has authority to teach, he has authority to forgive. He has authority over disease, and even over Moses. And the reaction of the religious leaders is, “He’s committing blasphemy.”
Those who reject Jesus’ authority to forgive sins will naturally be scandalized when Jesus accepts those whom they deem to be sinners. Our self-righteousness shows itself most sharply at the meeting point between who we expect Jesus to save, and who he actually saves. If you hate the king and his kingdom, then you will also hate his subjects. Those who want no part in the kingdom, who do not want Jesus for a king, will not accept those whom Jesus accepts. Instead, they will question. 2:7, “Why does this man speak this way?” 2:16, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 2:24, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” In other words, Who does he think he is? Why does he think he gets to decide who enters the kingdom? Why does he think he gets to make the rules? Thus, the Pharisees hurled at Jesus the supposedly scathing epithet, “Jesus, the friend of sinners.”
As such, Jesus (and his work in the church today) is the revealer of hearts. Luke 2:34-35, Simeon blessed Jesus and said to Mary, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” Jesus is in the business of revealing hearts—and he reveals hearts in part by how we react to who he saves.
If the story of the Paralytic answered the question, “Who has authority to forgive sins?” This story answers the question, “Whose sins does he forgive?” The forgiveness of sins is the basis of the kingdom of God. But only those who come in repentant faith to the king will be received into that kingdom. The kingdom of God is not for those who think they’re righteous. It’s for those who know they aren’t. It’s not for good people who are above forgiveness, but for bad people who know they need forgiveness.
In other words, who are his disciples? Who are those who follow him? Who are those who become fishers of men, the symbols of salvation and judgment? They are not who we would expect. They are tax collectors and sinners. They are the followers of Jesus. They are the bad people, the corrupt, the immoral, the adulterers. The swindlers. The cheaters. The self-obsessed. The perverse. The upside down. As he says in 1 Corinthians 1:26-27: “not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose the things that are low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” And that from a former Pharisee!
So, let’s look at this story in two parts and see who Jesus is—the friend of sinners—who we are and need to see ourselves as—those very sinners—and the great danger of being “righteous.”
I. The Call of a Tax Collector (2:13-14)
Jesus again goes out to the Sea. This is the sea of Galilee, as this takes place in Capernaum. In fact, he likely goes directly from Peter’s house to the sea. And the crowd follows him and, as was his custom, he continued to teach them. The sea shore would have accommodated bigger crowds. While the crowds that desired healing were somewhat of a hinderance to his stated purpose of preaching, he preached to the crowds whenever they came to him. As he passes by along the sea, he sees the tax booth. With a tax collector named Levi sitting in it. This is likely Matthew the Apostle, the writer of the Gospel that bears his name, which that gospel records.
To understand the weight of this moment, we need to understand something about the tax system of that day. Just like today, it was complex. The Romans franchised tax districts at a fixed rate, giving the rights to collect taxes to individuals who would then sub-let that right to smaller, local names who would do the dirty work of taking the money. So long as Rome got their cut, there was no accountability for anything extra those tax collectors would take. So, it was a criminal way to get rich quickly.
There were two kinds of taxes: stated taxes and duties. Stated taxes were fixed. There was a poll tax from males age 14-65 and females 12-65. There was a ground tax from any produce of the ground—10% of all grain and 20% of all wine and oil, as well as a percentage of fish which would have been abundant in Capernaum. There was a 1% income tax.
But the duties were where extortion occurred. There were tolls for road usage, taxes for docking ships. There was sales tax, and import/export taxes from goods coming from other tetrarchies (little kingdoms). There was a wheelage tax. Basically, tax collectors could stop anyone on the road, make them empty their pack, and arbitrarily charge them for whatever they wanted.
If you couldn’t pay, they would offer high interest loans. If you couldn’t pay those back, they would even send enforcers and thugs to make sure you paid up. These naturally attracted the kind of low-lifes and corrupt and immoral people that would be so hated by civilized society. Essentially it was like the mafia.
Levi was one of these lower-ranked tax collectors who did the dirty work. He wasn’t a chief tax collector, but he still made a good amount of unjust gain off his countrymen. To make matters worse, his name is Jewish, which means that he was also a traitor—hated by everyone and especially the Pharisees.
It is to this man that Jesus says, “follow me.” And immediately, he rose and followed him. Mark is usually succinct like this and leaves us to read between the lines—Jesus had been preaching for a year or more at this point, and had spent much time in Capernaum. Levi understood Jesus message, heard it, accepted it, and when Jesus called him, he followed. But the impression that Mark gives us is that he immediately left everything in obedience and followed Jesus. He repented and trusted in Jesus. Luke 5:28 adds the detail, “And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.” He gave up his franchise to the next greedy, money-grubbing traitor in line and turned his back on it all and followed Jesus. He gave up his comfortable lifestyle, his big house, his lavish banquets, all gained by theft and immorality and sin, and he traded it all for poverty, persecution, and no place to lay his head. In a different sense than Paul meant, he counted whatever gain he had as loss for the sake of Christ. He counted everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
If you were Levi, what would you do? Perhaps what he did, throw a banquet and invite all his friends in hopes that they too would follow Jesus.
II. The Banquet with Sinners (2:15-17)
He was reclining at table in Levi’s house—they were eating a long, relaxed, leisurely meal. And there were “many tax collectors and sinners” there reclining with him and his disciples, which at least included Peter, Andrew, James, and John. For there were many tax collectors and sinners who followed Jesus. This is the start of a revival in the criminal underbelly of Capernaum! It was a conglomeration of the worst of the worst—tax collectors, prostitutes, thugs, enforcers, criminals—all those who would have been viewed as unacceptable company by society and the Pharisees. And they were following him, just like Levi.
Yet while he feasts, there is a group peering in the windows, seeing Jesus eat with people like that. They are the “scribes of the Pharisees”—the same group that internally accused Jesus of blasphemy. They were scribes who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees, the separationist sect who were particularly learned in the writings of the law and the oral traditions of the Pharisees.
Who were the Pharisees? Today, we equate “Pharisees” with “hypocrites.” While Jesus does charge the Pharisees with hypocrisy, this is not quite the full picture of the conflict between Pharisees and Jesus. Pharisees were broadly well-esteemed by the people. They had less political and monetary influence as their more theologically liberal counterparts, the Sadducees. They were what we might see as religious conservatives, believing in the authority of Scripture, the resurrection from the dead, and looked for the coming of Messiah.
The Pharisees had an obsessive interest in purity. In fact, their name comes from the word for “separate.” They were separatists. They particularly had a desire to fill in the gaps in the law with a bunch of rules to build a “fence” around the law so that the people would not accidentally break the law. For example, the laws says not to do any work on the Sabbath, but it doesn’t give many details beyond that. So, to help the people not break the Sabbath accidentally, they reasoned out a number of man-made traditions. For example, you were not allowed to glean on the Sabbath as this was considered harvesting, which was work. Nor were you allowed to heal any non-life-threatening disease, as this was also work. Similarly, only knots that could be untied with one hand could be tied, but you could tie a bucket over a well, but only with a belt and not with a rope.
Silly as these seem to us, they were well intentioned. Yet, well intentioned as they are, the fatal flaw is that the Pharisees exalted their man-made traditions to the degree that to obey them was to obey Scripture itself. But because they were man-made, it often led people to actually break the very intention of the law itself. So, they would dedicate their wealth to God as “Corban,” and therefore able go to nowhere except the temple, thus preventing them from honoring their parents by using that money to take care of them in their old age. Or, they would worry about tithing mint and dill and cumin, but would neglect weightier matters of justice and mercy and love. They would wash their hands before meals while neglecting the fact that the heart needed to be cleansed before the hands.
So the central flaw of the Pharisees was not necessarily that they were judgmental or hypocritical—though they were these—it was that they were hyper-critical. They were obsessed with external obedience while neglecting the heart. They raised their man-made traditions to the level of divine commandments. They would teach one thing while doing the opposite through sleight of hand. All of this led the Pharisees to be critical of “tax collectors” and “sinners.”
They would read Psalm 1:1, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.” Or Proverbs 1:10, 15, “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent…my son, do not walk in the way with them; hold back your foot from their paths.” They would have heartily agreed with Paul’s citation of Menander in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Bad company ruins good morals.” To hang out with sinners would be to risk defilement from eating food that was prepared the wrong way, or from vessels that were not cleansed in the right way, in a house that was likely made unclean by Gentiles or other defilements. But worst of all, it would have been to countenance those who were not considered holy enough to come into the presence of God as his people.
So, they stand outside the house—surely they did not enter it—and, man-fearers as they are, they do not confront Jesus directly but instead complain to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” One way or another Jesus heard it and responds with what should have been obvious to them.
“Those who are well have no need of a physician.” You know this. Doctors can’t help people who think they’re healthy. Patient compliance is a whole thing! Doctors go to those who are sick.
“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” You are healthy—or so you think. So there’s nothing that I can do for you. You are righteous—or so you think. So I cannot forgive you. But for those who repent, for those who believe my word, I forgive them. So I will go to them. I came for that purpose.
Part of the irony of Jesus statement to the Pharisees is that they too were sick. They just didn’t see it. When Jesus says that they are “righteous,” he is speaking ironically. He means that they are self-righteous. He calls to everyone, yet it is only those with ears to hear who heed the call. Self-righteousness dulls the hearing of the gospel call. It deadens our senses to the words of grace. It makes us look at our lives as good enough—even if we verbally acknowledge that we are not, we live as though we are and interact with Christ and others as though we are. They too were sick, they too were sinners, for “there is none righteous, no, not one.” But they trusted in themselves, that they were righteous.
The Pharisees had either forgotten or never learned or never read (as Jesus was so apt to remind them) that the law was never given for the purpose of making one righteous. Rather, the law was given to increase the trespass. The law was given to convict sinful Israel of their sin. It was given to show them that they could not keep them law, rather than to teach them how they could. While it was a pathway to living a life that pleased God, it carried with it absolutely not power to change the sinful human heart. In other words, it was always meant to point them to the Savior—to bring sinners into God’s presence not by establishing their own righteousness, but by pointing to the substitutionary sacrifice of their king for them.
Conclusion
Thus, in conclusion, we learn many things from this story.
First, we learn about the nature of the kingdom. The kingdom is for sinners. That is to say, it is for people like you and me. You are the sinner. You are the tax collector. You are the Pharisee. And Jesus has come to save ones like you. The kingdom of God is not for those who perfectly keep the law. It is not for those who obsessively look for purity. It is not for those who believe themselves righteous or healthy or whole. It is for sinners and tax collectors, for murderers, adulterers, and thieves. It is for the selfish and the proud, the depressed and the anxious, the harsh and the cruel. So come! Repent! There is forgiveness with him that he might be feared! Let not conscience make you linger! All the fitness he requires is that you feel your need of him! Come, ye sinners! He will save you and welcome you into his kingdom with rejoicing so lavish it will make you blush.
Second, we learn about the nature of the king. He is gentle, lowly, humble, and kind. The very name that the Pharisees hurled at him—Friend of sinners—is the very heart of comfort for sinners like you and me. He is a doctor to the sick. He is the sufficient savior. He provides righteousness for those who do not have any and know it. And he rebukes those who believe that they are righteous. He is not content to leave any sick person in their illness, but will bring us all to health if we are willing.
Third, we learn about the nature of our calling. A question for self-diagnosis. Are you close enough to people who are “sick” that you might be able to be a physician to their souls by bringing the gospel to them? Or do you see people who are “sick” as those who should be avoided and quarantined and left to their fate? Have you structured your life in such a way that you can bring healing to those who need it?
Fourth, we learn what will keep us out of the kingdom of God. Self-righteousness is the morsel under the tongue that will keep many out of heaven on the last day. We trust in our works. “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all I get.” We trust in ourselves because we are righteous. How do you know that you are self-righteous? How do you look at the others in the church—particularly those who do not belong to the same “class” as you? That will tell you very quickly. “Jesus would never accept someone who thinks that. He would never forgive someone who did that. He would never forgive someone who voted for them.” In other words, “Why does this man eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Fifth, we learn what we must do to enter the kingdom of God. We must come to Jesus. We must hear his call to follow him, and obey it. We must not give consideration to our deeds—they will not keep us from him. He will not reject us if we are sinners and tax collectors, if we have done terrible things. He is the friend of sinners. We must trust him. We must repent of our sins. He does not ask the sick to become well, but he asks the sick to come to him. We must turn away from them, yes. But do not think that he will reject us because we have committed them. He loves to save tax collectors and sinners like you and me. So come to him sick, wounded, sore, needy, poor, broken, confused, unrighteous, full of sin. He will heal you, make you sound and whole, give you spiritual riches, teach you, guide you direct you, and forgive you. He will welcome you gloriously into his kingdom.