How could Jesus possibly associate with “those people”? In our increasingly polarized society, the question is becoming increasingly common. Some might point to the January 6 protesters or to those who espouse racist views as especially worthy of condemnation. Others might point to some of the millions of able-bodied, working-age American men who aren’t even looking for a job, or to those who destroy their lives and families with drugs or alcohol.

And the Pharisees in today’s passage were no different. They objected to the tax-collectors, Jewish people who contracted with the occupying Roman forces to provide an assigned amount of revenue from a certain area – and conveniently keeping for themselves anything they collected in excess of the agreed-upon sum. The Pharisees also looked down on other “sinners,” those who neglected to keep the Law of Moses as scrupulously as they themselves did.

But how did Jesus respond to such legalists? He simply said that he hadn’t come to save people like them, people who pride themselves on what they believe or how they live, people who don’t think they need any help in order to live a good life. Instead, Jesus said that He came to call sinners to repentance.

So it turns out that the most important question isn’t how we see “those people,” but how we see ourselves. For if we go on imagining that our social respectability or our sobriety or our work ethic makes us superior to “those people,” if we think that we are righteous by our own efforts, then the sad truth is that we aren’t among those Jesus came to call.

But if we truly understand that, regardless of our outward appearance, we are nothing more than rebels against the righteous rule of our God and King, we’ll appreciate the unconditional and self-sacrificial love that Jesus has shown to us. And we’ll be much more likely to show the same kind of love and grace to others, even to “those people” that we can’t stand. For when you come right down to it, in God’s eyes are they really any worse, any more guilty than we are?

Luke 5:27-32 (NASB)

27 And after that He went out, and noticed a tax-gatherer named Levi, sitting in the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow Me.”
28 And he left everything behind, and rose and began to follow Him.
29 And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax-gatherers and other people who were reclining at the table with them.
30 And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax-gatherers and sinners?”
31 And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.
32 “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”