Sinners to repentance
Luke Chapters 4 and 5 Read it here
In 5:27-32 we read of Jesus calling a tax collector to follow him, then going to the tax collector’s home for a large banquet. The tax collector here is called by the name of Levi. While the Bible never says so explicitly, most commentators believe Levi and Matthew to be the same person, as their stories are the same and Levi does not appear elsewhere.
In any case, this banquet leads to criticism of Jesus by the Pharisees. “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?,” they ask.
While tax collectors are probably not the most popular people even today, they would have been held in complete contempt in the context of this account.
The tax collectors were Jewish people who had chosen to work for Rome to collect taxes from their fellow Jews—taxes that were oppressive and crippling. They would have been viewed as traitors and conspirators.
This introduces one of the most radical shifts in thought between the Old and New Testaments.
Even in Judges the prevailing view was that the Israelites were to completely destroy the previous inhabitants of the area in order to protect their purity. There were some exceptions, but few. For the most part, radical separation between the “righteous” and the “sinners” was the rule.
By that standard, the Pharisees were right to question Jesus’s association with the people he was associating with. But Jesus took a different view.
The sinners weren’t to be feared, but to be sought—not to stay as sinners and be welcomed in that condition, but to be brought to repentance and restored to righteousness.