When Jesus called Matthew to follow him, He had another interesting encounter with the Pharisees. Matthew was a tax collector, and tax collectors the most disrespected people, because they worked with the Romans to fleece their own people financially. They were the scourge of the earth to their fellow Jews, and when Matthew followed Jesus other tax gatherers, and prostitutes (who were considered part of the same class socially as the tax gatherers) joined Matthew and Jesus for dinner that evening. When the Pharisees saw all of these tax gatherers, and sinners sitting with Jesus having a meal, they asked the disciples “Why does your teacher eat with the tax gatherers and sinners?” Jesus heard what the Pharisees were saying and he said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are ill. But go and learn what this means, I desire compassion, and not sacrifice, for I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
Physicians are never offended when a patient comes to them and tells them that they are ill and are in need of healing. As a matter of fact, a physician can’t help someone who is ill who won’t be transparent about their condition, or won’t admit that they are ill. Jesus will never reject the needy, but he is unable to help those who refuse to admit their weakness and need. You see, Jesus’s strength is made perfect in weakness, but that can’t happen unless a person comes clean about their imperfections, and desperate need. Jesus is attracted to the broken and needy, because there he can demonstrate his compassion by releasing His strength into all those broken and needy places. Jesus isn’t looking for people who are trying to offer him the sacrifices of self-sufficiency and self effort. The Christian life is not a life of behavioral modification built on a self-help program; instead, the Christian life is a life miraculous transformation that comes from the great physician. The system of sacrifice is man reaching out to God’ keeping record of how well he is doing in his effort to prove to God he deserves blessing, but mercy and compassion is about God reaching down from heaven to men and women who know their spiritual illness and in childlike faith look to Jesus to do for them what they know they could never do for themselves.
