Jesus Came for Sinners
Matthew 9:9-13
In our verse-by-verse study of the Gospel of Matthew, we have seen that Matthew’s theme is that Jesus is the promised Messiah-King. In every narrative, every teaching of Jesus Matthew is continually stressing that point. In Matthew 8 and 9, we find that Matthew has carefully selected events in the life of Jesus without much concern for the chronological sequence of the stories. Instead, we find that Matthew is carefully building a case that Jesus demonstrates authority in areas that only God has authority, thereby demonstrating that Jesus must in fact be God in human flesh. These different areas of authority build in significance.
In Matthew 8, we saw Jesus healing a leper with a touch, a paralyzed boy with just a command without even seeing him, and Peter’s mother-in-law from a fever. Matthew then tells us that Jesus was healing every disease brought to Him and casting out demons as well. Jesus has authority over sickness and disease. Then Jesus demonstrated authority over nature itself by stopping the wind and calming the sea with a simple command. Next, Matthew showed that Jesus has power over the supernatural when He cast out a legion of demons from two men. Jesus has authority over sickness, disease, nature, and the supernatural. And then last week, we saw that Jesus has the authority to forgive sin. This power is of the greatest significance because sin is the root of all mankind’s problems, and more than anything else, people need their sins forgiven.
Recall that after Matthew showed the first three miracles of healing in Matthew 8, he presented Jesus’ dialogues with two would-be disciples where Jesus explained the cost of following Him. Now, after the second set of three miracles, Matthew again narrates two dialogues with Jesus focusing on discipleship. We will look at the first of these today and the second next Sunday. Today’s passage is also the second of three controversy stories that open up Matthew 9. Last time, some scribes thought Jesus was blaspheming when He forgave sins. In this week’s passage, the Pharisees accuse Jesus of eating with tax collectors and sinners.
There is also a similar theme between last week’s passage and our one today. Last week’s passage (Matthew 9:1-8) was about Jesus’ power to forgive sin. Today’s passage (Matthew 9:9-13) is about Jesus calling sinners. Let’s look at these verses in three sections today: 1) Jesus called sinners (Matt. 9:9); 2) Jesus associated with sinners (Matt. 9:10-11); and 3) Jesus came to heal sinners (Matt. 9:12-13).[1]
1. Jesus Called Sinners (Matt. 9:9)
Matthew gives us the setting in verse 9: “As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office.” Matthew places this story right after Jesus proved something very important. He had proven that He had the authority to forgive sins. And right after Jesus demonstrated His authority to forgive sin, what does Matthew show Jesus does next? He demonstrates His mission by calling sinners to follow Him.
Matthew doesn’t tell us how much time passed, but that Jesus “passed on from there,” in Capernaum, His home base. Mark informs us that Jesus “went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them.” (Mark 2:13). Then, returning from the lake, Jesus passed by Matthew’s tax booth (Mark 2:14).
This story is especially significant because Matthew is the writer of this Gospel account. Many people in the Bible had two names. And so, when Mark and Luke wrote of his ministry as an apostle, they called him “Matthew”, but when they told the story of his being called while a tax collector, they chose to refer to him by his lesser-known name “Levi” (Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32). Maybe they chose to do this out of respect for his apostolic ministry and from a desire to protect his ministry from the scandal of his dubious past. But Matthew himself had no such hesitancy. In telling his own story of his sordid past, he calls himself “Matthew”. In fact, even when he included his name in the list of apostles in Matthew 10:3, he identified himself with his sin calling himself, “Matthew the tax collector“.[2]
A tax collector, in Jesus’ day, was a Jewish man who collected taxes from his own Jewish kinsmen on behalf of the Gentile Roman government. He made his living by collecting not only the required revenue appointed by the Roman government but by also collecting a percentage above that required amount as his own cut.
Most Jews considered a tax collector a traitor to his own people. He was a sell-out to an occupying Gentile government. And he was doubly despised by his fellow Jews; because he not only collected taxes from his own people for the Roman occupiers, but also because collection of that tax was characterized by greed, extortion, deceit, bullying, and oppression. There was no such thing as an honest tax collector in that system. Other Jews considered tax collectors to be the worst of sinners in the same category as harlots, drunkards, and thieves. A tax collector was not permitted to serve as a witness in a court of law. Any money that came from him was to be considered “defiled”.
Someone has once said, “The church is the only fellowship in the world where the one requirement for membership is the unworthiness of the candidate.”1 The Holy Spirit has chosen to include this story in the Bible because it has great lessons to teach us about how merciful and loving our wonderful Savior is to those sinners that the world despises the most and considers the most unworthy.[3]
Where was Matthew when Jesus called him? He was “sitting at the tax office” (Matt. 9:9). Jesus didn’t wait until after Matthew changed his life and left the tax booth to call him. That’s the way that Jesus calls sinners—He calls them while they are still sinners. In fact, Paul writes in Romans 5, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8). Do you know that that’s why our Savior Himself said He came? Jesus said about another tax collector, Zacchaeus, ” for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). Jesus doesn’t sit around and wait for the lost to come to Him, He seeks them and saves them.
Look at Jesus’ call to Matthew: “… And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’” Matthew doesn’t tell us how much he knew about Jesus before He called him to follow. As we already saw, Jesus had done outstanding miracles in Capernaum and had regularly taught the word of God there. Surely Matthew knew all this. Still, it must have come as a shock to both Matthew and all those who were there that day that Jesus not only talked with him, but called him to be a disciple. “Follow Me” is the same call to discipleship that Jesus gave to the fishermen, Peter and Andrew, in Matthew 4:19.
How does Matthew respond? “… So he arose and followed Him” (Matt. 9:9). He left the tax collector’s booth. There was no going back for Matthew. The Gospel of Luke tells us he “left all” to follow Jesus (Luke 5:28). He left a cushy job that made him wealthy. He left his life of sin and stealing. He left all this and more to follow Jesus.
Listen, Jesus calls you as you are, but He doesn’t leave you as you are. He calls you while you are still in your sin, but He also calls you out of your sin. He calls you to follow Him, to be His disciple, to walk as He walked, and to live as He lived. This is the Christian life—following Jesus.
So first, Jesus calls sinners, and second,
2. Jesus Associates with Sinners (Matt. 9:10-11)
Matthew left his wicked profession behind, rose up, and followed Jesus. And next, he tells us, “Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples” (Matt. 9:10). When Mark tells this story, he lets us know that this was Matthew’s own house that Jesus went to. It must have been a very large house, considering that “many tax collectors and sinners” came and joined Jesus and His disciples at the meal. And Luke tells us even more – letting us know that Matthew was putting on a great feast in Jesus’ honor (Luke 5:29).
Matthew had found the Savior; and I believe he wanted to have a bunch of his former friends over to meet Jesus and be introduced to the Savior too! When one hopeless and needy sinner discovers the mercy of the Savior, he wants to share that mercy with other hopeless and needy sinners!
It’s important to understand what Matthew means by the word ‘sinners’ here. He’s not saying that some people are sinners and some people are not. The Bible is clear that we are all sinners. But the Jewish people used this word for those people whom they felt were the very worst of sinners –tax collectors, thieves, drunkards, and prostitutes. They called them ‘sinners,’ because they felt that those sins were so much worse than their own sins.
Now some people read passages like this one and use them to excuse sin. They say this passage shows that Jesus doesn’t care how you live. He accepts you as you are, and fellowships with you—sin and all. And then they say we also should accept people just as they are, without saying anything about their sin. After all, isn’t that what Jesus did? But we already saw from Matthew 9:9 that Jesus calls you as you are but he doesn’t leave you as you are. And Jesus will say that He came to bring sinners to repentance, not just to leave them in their sin.
The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about not associating with people who professed to be believers but were continuing to live immoral lives. He tells them: “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.” (1 Cor. 5:9-10). We shouldn’t be surprised when unbelievers are living immoral lives. They’re not believers! But true Christians are not to continue to live immoral lives.
Jesus shows us that we don’t avoid sinners who need Christ. Jesus didn’t avoid lost sinners, and neither should we.
Why did sinful people seem to flock to Jesus? For one thing, He loved them. He never condoned their sin, but they knew that He loved them. They knew they needed forgiveness. They knew that Jesus could forgive their sins. I believe they felt that Jesus looked past what they were right then, and saw them for what He had come to save them to be in glory.
Now, contrast this with the attitude of the Pharisees. They were the religious leaders of the day. From the outside, no one looked more righteous than a Pharisee. One thing I can assure you is that the tax collectors and sinners weren’t flocking to the homes of the Pharisees! The name Pharisee itself comes from a Hebrew word that means to separate. They separated themselves from any who were not as religious as they were. The Pharisees did their best to avoid ‘sinners’. In fact, one of their sayings was this: “Keep far from an evil neighbor and do not associate with the wicked.” (Aboth 1:7).[4] These Pharisees objected to Jesus’ disciples having dinner with such riff-raff. Matthew 9:11 tells us, “And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, ‘Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” The way their question is phrased suggests that they viewed this as Jesus’ habit.[5] The Pharisees are probably a little jealous that instead of choosing to dine with them, Jesus chose to dine with the tax collectors and sinners.
Notice that the Pharisees don’t complain to Jesus directly but to His disciples. They don’t seem interested in getting an answer, they just want to undermine Jesus with His disciples. They call Jesus “your Teacher”. The title “teacher” meant much more than just someone who passes knowledge and information on to students. It referred to someone who also taught by example! Jesus once told His disciples, “You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am;” and then He told them, “. . . I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:13, 15). The Pharisees were complaining to Jesus’ disciples that their “Teacher” was setting an unspeakable example to them – eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners!
Jesus did set an example for His followers. Jesus’ close association with sinners is meant to be our example to follow. We are to love the poor, needy, despised sinners of this world so much that we welcome them into our presence so that they’ll know that they are loved. How else will they come to know Christ and follow Him?
We have seen that Jesus called sinners, He associated with sinners, and thirdly,
3. Jesus Came for Sinners (Matt. 9:12-13)
Matthew 9:12-13 says, “When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ criticism with three brief, striking statements, each of which highlights the fact that Jesus came for sinners.
First of all, Jesus tells them: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” (Matt. 9:12).
Could you imagine going to a doctor and complaining to him, “Listen, Doc. I don’t care too much for the kind of people you associate with. You always seem to be around sick people!” What a ridiculous statement! Who else would you expect a doctor to be associated with? In the same way, who else would you expect the Savior of sinners to be associated with than sinners who need to be saved? Jesus is saying, “Who else would you have me go to?”
If you think you are well, you probably are not going to seek help from a doctor. Medicine is for the sick, not the healthy. How many of you would go to a doctor and say, “Doc, I feel really healthy. Please give me a full course of chemotherapy.” Of course, you wouldn’t say that unless you knew you had cancer and it was the only treatment that would cure you! Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, “You don’t think you are sick, so you won’t come to me for healing. These ‘sinners’ know they are sick, and so I go to them.”
Jesus invites us to see Him as our spiritual physician. He does not set up an office and wait for people to come to Him. He makes house calls. Indeed, sometimes He walks up to people in the street and says, “I know you are sick; I have come to heal you.”[6]
Second, Jesus communicated from the scriptures that it was God’s purpose to be merciful to sinners. He quoted the words of God to them from the Old Testament prophecy of Hosea 6:6. He said (Matt. 9:13), “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’“.
Despite all their study of the scriptures, the Pharisees had obviously failed to ever understand God’s message. God’s message is all about redemption, not destruction. Even when you read those difficult passages of God’s judgment in the Old Testament, God gives them because He is calling men to repentance so that they won’t be ultimately judged. God is a God of great compassion, great mercy. And yet the Pharisees didn’t get that at all.
By quoting this verse, Jesus wasn’t saying that God did not require a sacrifice for sin. Clearly, the Old Testament teaches that He does. In fact, those sacrifices required by the law of Moses pictured for us the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. In His mercy, God gave the sacrifice of His own Son for sinners. In quoting this verse, Jesus is teaching that the sacrifice was all about mercy!
God doesn’t want mercy instead of sacrifice and obedience. Rather He wants mercy along with sacrifice and obedience. Jesus is saying that because God is merciful towards us, we also ought to be merciful to others.
And finally, Jesus communicates that He came for sinners by giving a clear affirmation of His own mission. He says plainly, “For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matt. 9:13). Jesus is not saying that the Pharisees were “righteous”, but that they saw themselves as “righteous”. Those who don’t see themselves as needy sinners have no interest in a Savior. They’re like the false believers in the church at Laodicea in Revelation 3:17, saying of themselves, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing“, not knowing that, in reality, they are “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked“.
The Pharisees completely misunderstood Jesus’ mission. They thought that they were already righteous, so they didn’t need a Savior. They thought the Messiah would come to reward them for their righteousness, not call them to repent of their sinfulness. “Jesus did not come to this earth to write ‘A+’ on the moral report cards of all the good boys and girls. He came to call sinners, to invite the bad boys and girls to His gospel feast.”[7]
It wasn’t for the righteous that Christ relinquished His glory and stepped out of heaven. It wasn’t for the righteous that Christ suffered the temptation of Satan. It wasn’t for the righteous that Christ endured the hostility of man. It wasn’t for the righteous that Christ submitted to death on the cross. The righteous didn’t need it.
Christ came for sinners. Christ suffered for sinners. Christ endured for sinners. Christ died for sinners. Paul wrote, “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.” (1 Tim. 1:15).
This is good news for us because the Bible tells us there is no one righteous. We read in Romans 3: “There is none righteous, no, not one … for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:10,23). We all have sinned. We all fall short of God’s glory. But praise God! Jesus came for sinners. The only qualification you need for Jesus to call you is that you are a sinner. Jesus came to call sinners because there is no one else to call.[8]
Jesus called sinners; He associated with sinners; and He came to save sinners.
What can we take to heart from this passage today?
Jesus can save anyone. It doesn’t matter how badly you’ve sinned against God or failed other people in your life. You do not need to get your life together before coming to Jesus. Jesus calls sinners, so if you’re a sinner, you qualify. The one who knows he is the worst sinner is the very best candidate for salvation.
You must acknowledge your sinfulness. Jesus did not come to call the righteous or those who think they are righteous. You must confess your sin to God. You must know that God is a holy God and you are condemned as a sinner. If you think for one minute that you are able to make yourself look good before God through good works or religious rituals, you are badly mistaken. No one looked better on the outside than a Pharisee, and Jesus condemned their self-righteousness. Jesus saves sinners but He rejects the self-righteous.
Finally, this passage has something to say to those who are followers of Jesus. We should be merciful to sinners, even as God was merciful to us. All of us are just beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. Jesus saved you not so that you would think you are better than others, but so that you would be merciful to others in their sin and point them to Christ who can save them from their sin.
[1] Ray Fowler, Calling Sinners. https://www.rayfowler.org/sermons/matthew/calling-sinners/. I adapted Fowler’s outline and drew from some of his points in developing this sermon.
[2] Greg Allen, The Teacher of Mercy. https://www.bethanybible.org/archive/2005/100205.htm#f1
[3] Allen, ibid.
[4] Quoted by Ray Fowler, ibid.
[5] Daniel M. Doriani, Matthew & 2, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani, vol. 1, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 381.
[6] Daniel M. Doriani, ibid, 386.
[7] Daniel M. Doriani, ibid.
[8] Daniel M. Doriani, ibid, 387.
