9:9–13 When Jesus leaves the paralytic (vv. 1–8), he travels a road that takes him to a tax collector named Matthew. In the original, “called Matthew” is tacked onto the sentence, as if Matthew was half inclined to leave his name out of the story. (The parallel passages in Mark and Luke call him Levi, so that he joins Scripture’s list of men with two names.) Matthew probably collected duties on goods that traveled either the major road connecting Syria and Egypt or the road skirting the Sea of Galilee. Tax collectors were not the equivalent of the tax agents of modern Western nations. They were agents of the Roman occupiers, and therefore traitors. They were wealthy because they often had power to (over)assess the value of the goods they taxed. Because they were wealthy collaborators and had regular contact with Gentiles, they held pariah status in Israel.

Since both Jesus and Matthew hailed from Capernaum, Matthew had to know Jesus, so the call is not as sudden as it seems. Still, when Jesus says, “Follow me,” Matthew immediately gets up and follows. The command to follow is present tense, demanding continuous action, so Matthew’s action is decisive and permanent. Luke 5:28 says what Matthew implies: he “[left] everything” to follow Jesus—his wealth, his work, and his associates.

Although he begins the peripatetic life of a disciple and apostle, Matthew does not abandon his associates. Matthew 9:10 reports how Jesus shares a meal “in the house” with “many tax collectors and sinners,” and Mark 2:15 and Luke 5:29 detail that Matthew/Levi hosts the meal in his house. In that culture, reclining at table was a sign of acceptance and deep friendship. The meal brings Jesus, Matthew’s friends, and other “sinners” together. For the Pharisees, “sinners” are people with disreputable work, and thus constantly unclean. The shared meal is therefore a potent sign of Jesus’ accepting grace, but for that reason it leads Pharisees to ask Jesus’ disciples why he chooses to “eat with tax collectors and sinners” (Matt. 9:11).148 Reading Matthew as a whole, we see that Jesus eats with sinners because he accepts sinners where they are, even if he does not want them to remain where they are. Encounter, repentance, and faith precede the call for moral change. Jesus constantly describes his standards and calls people to himself, but in the logic of redemption, God’s proclamation of love precedes the declaration of law.

When Jesus hears of their question, he replies in three ways. First, he notes that the healthy “have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (v. 12). Jesus invites Israel to see him as a spiritual physician. Unlike typical physicians, he both receives the sick who come to him and also calls on sinners where they are. When Jesus speaks of “those who are strong” (Gk. hoi ischyontes; v. 12), and later when he speaks of “the righteous” (v. 13), he speaks to the Pharisees as they view themselves, not as God views them. At one level, Jesus means that he spends time with sinners because they need him, while the Pharisees, by their lights, do not. But if Pharisees habitually oppose and criticize Jesus, are they strong or “righteous”? Jesus knows, in Paul’s words, that no one is righteous (Rom. 3:10). So Jesus did not come for the righteous, because there are none but sinners. Jesus came for the sick and invited all to see him as their physician. Sometimes, like a typical physician, he waited for people to come to him, but he also came to them, in homes and streets, to heal them.

Second, he says, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matt. 9:13). “Sacrifice” here signifies “strict obedience to the commandments of God.”149 The Pharisees represent those who believe obedience is more important than mercy. But because God made his covenants with sinners, mercy is more foundational. That is why Jesus says, third, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” This is a prime statement of the purpose of Jesus’ incarnation and ministry (cf. 5:17; 20:28; Luke 19:10; 1 Tim. 1:15). He came to call sinners to himself.

9:14–17 Matthew moves from a question about feasting to one about fasting. John’s disciples ask why Jesus’ disciples do not fast (v. 14). The question is challenging, but the mood is different, since Jesus and John are allies. Fasting was a sign of piety and devotion among observant Jews, and intertestamental literature associates fasting with distress or mourning (1 Macc. 3:47; 2 Macc. 13:12; Jdt. 8:6). But Jesus compares his day to a wedding feast, a time to celebrate. No one fasts at a wedding banquet, when the groom, Jesus, is present, do they (cf. John 3:29)?150 But the groom will be “taken away”; then his disciples “will fast” (Matt. 9:15). This is an early hint of Jesus’ fate. The evidence is already appearing: John is in prison and Jewish leaders have begun to turn against Jesus. When Jesus dies, it will be time to fast, as his disciples will do (Acts 9:3–9; 13:2–3).

Jesus concludes with a homely illustration taken from the poor, who patch their clothes and wineskins. It is foolish, he says, to patch old garments with new cloth; the fabric will tear. Neither does new wine, still fermenting, go into an old wineskin that is ready to rupture. The new wine of the new covenant deserves new receptacles (Matt. 9:17). Old forms and habits cannot contain the kingdom of grace and joy that Jesus brings. So fasting may decline in significance.