Luke 5:29-32 (HCSB) Then Levi hosted a grand banquet for Him at his house. Now there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were guests with them. But the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to His disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus replied to them, “The healthy don’t need a doctor, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Despite common portrayals, Levi’s house that day was not loaded down with prostitutes, and drug dealers, and cutthroats and thieves. Instead, the crowd there was composed of some other tax collectors that Matthew knew and wanted to introduce to Jesus, as well as other pretty normal people that Mark tells us were followers of Jesus (Mark 2:15). These normal people were what the Pharisees called “Am ha aretz,” or “people of the earth,” because they were normal working people who didn’t have a lot of time to spend studying all of the fine points of the law. Thus they frequently broke many of the rules that the Pharisees lived by, and often broke many of God’s commands, either through ignorance, or through compromise. Normal people.

Both groups of people, the tax collectors and the “people of the earth,” were studiously avoided by the Pharisees. In fact, they believed that contact with these “sinners” would smudge their own righteousness. Thus they were horrified that Jesus would choose to “socialize” with them. Their basic line of thought was, if Jesus was really a holy man, He would naturally choose to hang out with other holy people (like themselves)l. If He was choosing to hang out with these “sinners,” that showed that He was either ignorant of the consequences of that choice, or He wasn’t actually that holy.

But Jesus had an entirely different view on the subject. He knew who these people were. He knew that they were sinners. In fact, He even knew the commandments that they had broken. But He also knew their hunger and thirst for genuine righteousness, and their soft, seeking hearts. Just as a sick person is drawn to a doctor, so these soul-sick sinners were drawn to Jesus. And just as a doctor is drawn to help those who need their healing skills, so Jesus would not turn away from those who needed Him in order to be made spiritually whole. In fact, they were the reason that He had come.

Jesus knew that the Pharisees, by and large, had no sense of their own sinfulness, hence no sense of their need of a savior. They believed that they were doing just fine being holy on their own. And Jesus was content to let them go on in their self-righteousness. But, as soon as one of them suddenly realized their own deep-seated sinfulness, as soon as they began to look for a savior, a physician for their souls, He would be found by them.

Father, thank You that You received me when I was left devastated by my own sinfulness and left hopeless by my inability to heal myself. You touched me and made me whole. You gave me hope, and a whole new life, a whole new future. Help me, in turn, never turn away from those who need You, no matter how dirty their souls may be. Help me instead to wholeheartedly point them to You. Amen.