Monday
Monday
The Debate over Fraternization
It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Mark 2:17
In Mark’s account of this second debate, the expression “tax collectors and ‘sinners’” occurs three times. As we have seen (click here), tax collectors were universally disliked, even hated, at least by the local Jewish population in Galilee, firstly, because the taxes levied went into the coffers of Herod Antipas, secondly, because their work brought them into close contact with the Gentiles, and, thirdly, because it was their practice to extract as much as they could from their victims.
“Sinners” in this context were not just those who were disobedient to God’s moral law (like all of us) but those who, whether through ignorance or intent, did not live according to the traditions of the scribes. Both groups were shunned by all respectable people, who would neither give hospitality to them nor receive hospitality from them, fearing ceremonial contamination. But Jesus deliberately and freely fraternized with them, having no such fears. He both called Levi-Matthew (a tax collector) to follow him and then accepted his invitation to a meal in his house, along with many other tax collectors and “sinners.”
When the teachers of the law objected, Jesus responded by quoting a proverb, in which he likened himself to a doctor whose ministry was not to the healthy but to the sick, so that inevitably he would be found among those who needed him. When saying that he had come to call to repentance not the righteous but sinners, he meant not that some people are so righteous that they do not need salvation but that some people think they are. By “righteous” here he meant “self-righteous.” Just as we do not go to the doctor unless we are sick and admit it, so we will not come to Christ unless we are sinners and admit it. Nothing keeps people out of the kingdom of God more effectively than pride or self-sufficiency.
For further reading: Mark 2:13–17